Larry Silver, (Boy Performing), Muscle Beach Santa Monica, CA, 1954
New York’s urban landscape was in transition when Silver, who is now eighty-one, was prowling the city’s streets taking these pictures. In those years, the El still ran above Third Avenue, Oscar Niemeyer’s U.N. building went up, and Penn Station had not been torn down. But to Silver such sights were simply backdrops for people, whether they were the children he found horsing around in the dappled light of Grand Central Terminal or the pair of dishevelled women he caught quarreling with operatic fury. Silver’s women may recall Lisette Model and his children may call to mind Helen Levitt, but his approach is more formal, with an eye to Bauhaus-style skewed perspectives and an appreciation for the way grand architecture frames the passing throng.
