Rebecca Lepkoff
Born 1916, New York
Died 2014, Townshend, Vermont
1938 BA City College, New York
Selected museum exhibitions: Tenement Museum, New York (2012); Jewish Museum, New York (2012); Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro (2010, 2013); New York Public Library, 2006
Selected public collections: Museum of the City of New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Vermont Historical Society, Barre
Growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Rebecca Lepkoff began photographing her native city upon buying her first camera in 1938. She was an active member of the famed Photo League, a cooperative of photographers in New York who banded together to promote creative and social causes. Images like “Kick the Can,” Ridge St., Lower East Side, 1947, chronicle the active life of the New York streets. According to the photographer: “People ask me – how did you know what to take? I just went outside, and there were the streets of my mother, of me, and whatnot. Very alive, full activity, with people.”