“My life as a photographer began in the streets of the city. For me, New York, with its diverse cultures and varied topography, presented a new challenge every day. My days were spent shooting with my 9 x 12 cm Zeiss Ikon camera; my nights in the darkroom and in discussion with other students and photographers. I was obsessed. […]

Over the years, I have worked as staff and freelance photographer for a wide variety of publications. My assignments and my independent projects took me all over and under the city, always searching for the human face of New York. I photographed people on the subways and on the beach in Coney Island, painters working on the Brooklyn Bridge, kids swimming in the East River; I photographed the night life and the violence, the working class and the upper class. In those days I traveled all around the city at any time of night or day, and except for rare instances I seldom felt in danger. The city was my home. As I look back at the work that I did during that period I realize that I was witness to a time that no longer exists, a more innocent time.

While I know that the city has changed, that the streets are dirtier and meaner, the energy that I love is still there. No matter where I go, I keep coming back to photograph New York. Of course the “good old days” were not all sweetness and light. There was poverty, racism, corruption, and violence in those days, too, but somehow we believed in the possible. We believed in hope.”

Arthur Leipzig (Growing Up in New York, 1995)