{"id":667711,"date":"2026-05-27T08:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T08:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/667711\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T08:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T08:38:29","slug":"restless-new-york-in-the-post-war-years-by-vivian-cherry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/667711\/","title":{"rendered":"Restless New York In The Post-War Years By Vivian Cherry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAs soon as people see a camera, they change, and what you see you lose\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Vivian<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vivian Cherry (July 27, 1920 \u2013 March 4, 2019) showed a New York City<\/a> of film noi<\/a>r energy and intrigue bathed in light and shadow. \u201cThe older photographers working at this time wanted to make pictures that looked like paintings but reality was coming up, and that was really great,\u201d she said of her move into street photography<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Game of Lynching, East Harlem, 1947<\/p>\n

\"NYC<\/p>\n

playing at a Lynching, East Harlem, 1947<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018There were no lynchings in New York, but there they are, playing that game and it didn\u2019t matter if they were black or white\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Third Avenue El, early 1950s<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was walking by a printers called Underwood and Underwood, and I saw a sign saying, \u2018Darkroom Help Wanted! \u2013 No Experience Necessary!\u2019 I remember it was the \u2018no experience\u2019 bit that caught my attention \u2013 I didn\u2019t know what the job would entail. At that time they were short on people to print photographs because so many men had been drafted, so I applied and got the job\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NYC<\/p>\n

Yorkville, 1947<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt was easier to take pictures of children then than it is now, because they\u2019d always be running around in the open spaces in the city, playing cops and robbers and shooting each other with their fingers\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NYC<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt\u2019s funny because now everybody has a camera, but back then the people I photographed didn\u2019t pay much attention to me\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I saw something interesting, I\u2019d put my camera to my eye straight away and shoot, and if someone started yelling at me, I\u2019d turn around and say, \u2018I didn\u2019t do it!\u2019 and then I\u2019d walk away very fast!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meatpacking Cows, undated<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018And if somebody didn\u2019t want their photograph taken, I didn\u2019t take it \u2026 except that I did too\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Vivian Cherry<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hudson river, 1955<\/p>\n

Vivian Cherry grew up in the Bronx, New York. Her parents, Sasha and Ida (Agranovitch) Cherry, were Russian-Jewish immigrants. After arriving in the United States, her father anglicised his name to Sam and worked as a house painter, while her mother was a homemaker.<\/p>\n

Cherry\u2019s earliest ambition was to become a dancer. She studied dance at the Denishawn School in the Bronx before attending Walton High School. She had been making her living as a dancer in nightclubs and on Broadway when a knee injury made her look for other ways to amke a living.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was walking by a printers called Underwood and Underwood and I saw a sign saying, \u2018Darkroom Help Wanted! \u2013 No Experience Necessary!\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cI remember it was the \u2018no experience\u2019 bit that caught my attention \u2013 I didn\u2019t know what the job would entail. At that time they were short on people to print photographs because so many men had been drafted, so I applied and got the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

She worked as a printer, and began to think about image-making.\u201cEventually I got myself a 35mm camera and just started walking the streets taking pictures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cherry\u2019s knee healed and she returned to Broadway, dancing in a production of Showboat, but photography was her calling. \u201cDancing is wonderful,\u201d she said, \u201cbut you don\u2019t get much of reality\u2026 Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, Paul Strand and Fons Iannelli were my favourites.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1947, she joined the Photo League, founded by Sid Grossman and Sol Libsohn during the Great Depression, and thought about addressing societal issues through photography. She often took pictures on the Third Avenue EL and of families on the stoops of Spanish Harlem.<\/p>\n

Cherry continued to photograph her New York for decades. Her work an be seen in permanent collections at MoMA, the Smithsonian and the National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Lower East Side, early 1950s<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Conductor, Third Avenue El, early 1950s<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Central Park Carriages, 1952<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Spanish Harlem, 1948<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Antoinette, Chelsea, 1954<\/p>\n

Via:\u00a0Daniel Cooney Fine Art<\/a>, New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAs soon as people see a camera, they change, and what you see you lose\u201d \u2013 Vivian Cherry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-667711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}