For some 70 years, Leo Goldstein's East Harlembodyof 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 memberof the Photo League.The East Harlem corpus, edited by Regina Monfort,represents an important and unique addition to thephotographic history of New York City. Because thereare no negatives in existence, it was of particularimportance to preserve the images in book form andmake them available to the public.The selected images reflect the postwar years in theEast Harlem community, which would grow intoa center of Puerto Rican culture and life in the U.S.From the families portrayed gathering on stoops, tothe kids at their shoeshine stations, to youths playingball in the streets, to posters on neighborhood walls,Goldstein's images of East Harlem provide a windowinto the socio-economic, cultural, and politicallandscape of the time.

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.

“Russian-Jewish immigrant Leo Goldstein (1901–1972) shared the progressive ethos of his ‘camera club,’ the New York Photo League, and, beginning in 1949, turned his empathetic heart and gifted eye toward the city’s latest ‘immigrants,’ Puerto Ricans—U.S. citizens segregated by language, custom, and race. Notably, the images comprise Goldstein’s own ‘edit,’ posthumously-rescued enlargements originally made for an unknown posterity. Today his photographs confront subsequent popular stereotypes, presenting afresh the newcomers’ enduring humanity.”

Julia Van Haaften, author of Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography

“[In the 1960s we] spawned our own group of activist photographers, people like Frank Espada, Hiram Maristany, and Mike Abramson, who chronicled in their work militant and bold new images of East Harlem and of Puerto Rican life in America. But. . . we now know that there was Leo Goldstein, a solitary photo artist of the 1950s who trained his lens on this heroic but little-known community of migrants. We who lived through those years in East Harlem can assure you, his lens was truer than any of the news articles, movies, or books of the era, and we are all enriched by the work he left behind.”

Juan González, from the Preface

"Even if that was only in the eye of the beholder, it gives Goldstein’s pictures a subtle warmth, a sense of camaraderie that’s all the more evident in the many pictures of people hanging out on stoops, as relaxed as if they were in their living rooms. They face the camera candidly, with little or no wariness or resentment, and Goldstein rewards them with portraits that are charming, compassionate, and among the period’s best (unintended, unself-conscious) fashion pictures."

Vince Aletti, review in Photograph