Leon Levinstein

Leon Levinstein (1910–1988) was an American street photographer best known for his work documenting everyday street life in New York City from the 1950s through the 1980s. In 1975 Levinstein was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Levinstein was born on 20 September 1910 in Buckhannon, West Virginia. He began high school in September 1923 at Baltimore City College, which was a public college-preparatory school. During his senior year in high school, he attended evening classes at the Maryland Institute of Arts in Baltimore. In the autumn of 1927, after graduating from high school, he enrolled as a part-time student at the Institute, taking courses in drawing, calligraphy, and design. In his application for a Guggenheim Fellowship he mentioned taking courses at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Levinstein's first job in advertising was with the Hecht Furniture Company in downtown Baltimore. From 1934 to 1937 he worked there as an assistant art director, doing layouts for newspaper advertisements. He then set out on his own as a freelance graphic artist and designer. Layouts were to be his forte throughout his career in advertising. In the autumn of 1948 he took an advanced workshop with the school's director and one of its most influential teachers, Sid Grossman. As a walker and a loner, it was only natural that Levinstein would prowl the streets of New York and the beaches of Coney Island, like numerous photographers before him. Levinstein was studying with Grossman in 1950 when Lisette and Evsa Model attended the class, and from 1954 until 1960 Levinstein was a student in Evsa Model's painting workshop.

One of his photographs was included in U.S. Camera Annual 1951, and two were chosen the following year. In 1956 he was among six featured photographers of the annual, together with Richard Avedon, Wynn Bullock, G.E. Kidder Smith (an architectural photographer), Eugene Smith, and Brett Weston. Over the course of the decade, his work would also be in five Popular Photography annuals. In 1952 he was the winner of Popular Photography's international photography contest, with a prize of $2,000.

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