East Harlem: The Postwar Years

For some 70 years, Leo Goldstein’s East Harlem body of work remained mostly untouched and unseen. The silver gelatin prints were catalogued in 2016, and a selection is gathered here for the first time. The photographs were taken over a number of years, beginning in 1949 when Goldstein was a member of the Photo League.

The East Harlem corpus, edited by Régina Monfort, represents an important and unique addition to the photographic history of New York City. Because there are no negatives in existence, it was of particular importance to preserve the images in book form and make them available to the public.

The selected images reflect the postwar years in the East Harlem community, which would grow into a center of Puerto Rican culture and life in the U.S. From the families portrayed gathering on stoops, to the kids at their shoeshine stations, to youths playing ball in the streets, to posters on neighborhood walls, Goldstein’s images of East Harlem provide a window into the socio-economic, cultural, and political landscape of the time.