1948 Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
Todd Webb (1905-200) was discharged from the US Navy in 1945. Before fighting in the war, Todd had worked as a stockbroker, a field in which he’d enjoyed notable success til losing all his money in the 1920s crash, prospected for gold in California and Panama, and worked as a forest ranger. In the 1930s whilst working for Chrysler in his native Detroit he joined the Chrysler Camera Club. A workshop class with Ansel Adams stoked his interest in photography. And so it was that after the war he picked up his camera and in search of anew life headed to New York City. There he “nurtured a friendship with Alfred Stieglitz”, whom he met in 1942, and his wife, the hymned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. She introduced Tood to Beaumont Newhall – in 1946 Newhall curated an exhibition of Todd’s photographs for The Museum of The City of New York: I See A City. Some of those you can see here.
1946 – View from Empire State Building
1946 – 125th Street, Harlem.
1948 – 3rd Avenue El looking south from Fulton Street Station
1946 – East 7th Street
“I have an intense interest in and feeling for people. Often, I find subject matter with no visible persons to be more peopled than the crowded street scene. Every window, doorway, street, building, every mark on a wall, every sign, has a human connotation.”
– Todd Webb
1946 – Fulton Fish Market wharf
1946 – Watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
1946 – Tenements and Graveyard from Chatham Square El Station.
1946 – 125th Street, Harlem. Whisk broom salesman.
1945 – The Battery, New York
1945 – 3rd Avenue from 42nd Street El Station
1946 – Maise, Queen of the Bowery.
1946 – 125th Street and Broadway, Harlem
10th Street, NYC – 1946
1948 – Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
1948 – Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
1948 – Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
1948 – Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets
1946 – Suffolk and Hester Streets
1946 – Third Avenue and Bowery.
1946 – Times Square sign painter.
1946 – Greenwich Village
1948 – Mott Street.
1946 – Third Avenue.
1946 – Orchard Street.
1946 – Amsterdam Avenue near 125th Street.
1946 – 37th Street.
1946 – Sixth Avenue
La Salle Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Harlem – 1946.
A Park Avenue storefront church in Harlem – 1946.
Near Fulton Fish Market – 1946.
“They stood in a row and I asked them to just stand as though they were talking. The boy who seemed to be the leader said with an Eastside accent, ‘Oh, you mean nonchalant. OK guys, get nonchalant.’ It sounded funnier than it reads.”
– Todd Webb, April 20, 1946
Mr. Perkins’ Pierce Arrow, Harlem – 1946.
A whisk broom salesman on 125th Street – 1946.
Third Avenue billboards – 1946
Looking southeast from the Empire State Building – 1946.
“Welcome home” signs on Third Avenue – 1945.
Amsterdam Avenue, near 125th Street – 1946.
A soldier getting a shoe shine on 125th Street – 1946.
A Third Avenue corset shop. -1946.
Tenements flattened for new housing projects on 113th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues – 1946.
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