Harold Feinstein, same league as H C-B, Elliot Erwitt. Harold who?

[RickEmmanuel]

Where have I been for 50 years not to have heard of this mid-to-late 20thC New York photographer who died in 2015. Still, no one else has. My wife called me to watch a Sky Arts documentary on the guy. A fascinating and independent personality moulded into a picture-taker whose work was stripped of sentimentality. Though he never saw people as freaks or wrecks at the edges of society. He never denigrated. His people all retain human dignity. What we see is how ordinary New Yorkers spent their lives. The close-up was his method. Limbs, bodies, smiles, lips, teeth, frowns, love, anguish. The tattooed guy staring at the lens at Coney Island 'looks like he's gonna knife you'; he was fearless. Yet he captured more of the inner self than many of his famous contemporaries. Not like HC-B, more in the Erwitt, Helen Levitt, Diane Arbus vein but charged with 5000 volts of humanism that few others can match. Escaping a brutal father at 15 he had pictures accepted at MOMA whilst still a teenager. And then the great 'Family of Man' curator Edward Steichen in the 50's took six. But (and this is huge) Feinstein snatched them away before Steichen could 'mess with them'. So ended Feinstein's upward ascent. He disappeared into obscurity. He was not represented by any classy gallery. He vanished... but he never stopped using up film and converting the frames into wonders in his darkroom. He emerged again as an old man. His book is changing hands at over £600, now. What an eye, what a brain, what a spirit!

[Terry S]

Another interesting character that has so far by passed my radar.

Sky on the web allow you to watch it, but again it looks like you have to surrender some details by downloading their app. Will I or won't I?... I think I will check to see if it's on Sky Arts again soon first.

https://www.sky.com/watch/sky-go/win...p9qb4Qwm4Dshgs

There is also a Kickstarter campaign for a DVD, which may well be the above...?

Also lots of shorts on his web-page:

https://www.feinsteinfilm.com/clips

...and on Youtube:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?biw=...0.La0CgjYUDDo:

Terry S

[MikeHeller]

Thanks, Terry; lots of material and info to plumb in the second two links. The first, as you say, was to download a Sky app and as I do not subscribe to Sky and I suspect that I would have to pay to download it, I was not tempted to investigate further.
Thanks, Mike