Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading women photographers in the inter-war period. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, she initially pursued an academic career before moving to Paris in 1930 to concentrate on photography. This photograph was taken during a trip to New York organised by the author Hendrik Willem Van Loon, who supported Bing.

Bing had photographed run down streets, street posters and the ongoing degradation of the city for a commission for the photographer and critic Emmanuel Sougez (1889-1972) in Paris in 1934 for the magazine L’Art vivante. Sougez admired her style and treatment of ‘the sad faces of our old streets’, naming her the ‘sensitive and artistic Ilse Bing’. Bing used her Leica camera to take photojournalistic images of everyday scenes, seizing a moment and immortalising it. This composition of New York looks at once posed and spontaneous, characteristic of modern photoreportage. The timeless quality of the image contradicts the urgent and poignant implications of hard times and inequalities in the city.