THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ANDY LEVIN: FROM NEW ORLEANS AND BEYOND
Photography has been my passion for more than 40 years, starting with my days in New York in the seventies working as a magazine photographer, and moving through my relocation to New Orleans in 2oo4. My mission is to capture the vitality of human experience. I work with daily life, ritual and celebration within which I look for moments of insight, especially in the context of music, art and dance. Thanks to your support I have been able to to bring you new and compelling photographs from around the world, and to expand on the work that I produced in New York in the 80’s and 90’s. notably as a street photographer in New York, and a beach photographer at Coney Island, where I was one of several photographers to follow in the tradition of Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark and many others. After growing up in the seaside community of Long Beach, New York I developed an great love of beach-life and culture, and the African American culture of the south which I grew fond of after developing close relationships with the women who took care of my family, who came from the South and the Caribbean. My father had been an avid photographer and often handed his old Nikon rangefinders off to me to take snapshots with and I became very comfortable both in front of and behind the camera. I started working at the mail room of Black Star, a prestigious photo agency in Manhattan at 17, and after college went to work for the agency as a staff photographer, working for New York Magazine and eventually became a Contributing Photographer at LIFE in the late 80’s.