Photographing New York City from the Lower East Side to
Coney Island, Leon Levinstein walked the city’s streets with an eye for the unseen
and ignored. Levinstein’s candid, gritty, and unsentimental pictures bring to
life midcentury New York’s energetic and sometimes unseemly streets. Working quickly and at close range, Levinstein photographed these
revelers in drag on the sidewalk of Greenwich Village, positioning himself so
that passersby would have to move around him while he shot. Whereas some in the
photograph seem uninterested in Levinstein’s camera, the image’s two main
subjects happily pose for a brief moment, showing off their matching wigs.