“My eyes search for people who are grateful for life, people who forgive, whose doubts have been removed, who understand the truth, whose enduring spirit is filled by such piercing light as to provide their present and future with hope.”
~ Louis Faurer
Louis was one of the greatest — and perhaps one of the most overlooked — street photographers of the 20th century. The city was entirely Faurer’s natural habitat; he seemed completely at home, at one with the people on its streets. However serene or edgy his encounters, one sensed Faurer as being, in some essential way, the same as the people in his photographs.
Yet, unlike many of his celebrated contemporaries — Robert Frank, William Klein — real recognition seemed to elude him. Even Diane Arbus once sat in his classroom. He died penniless in a nursing home on the Upper West Side in 2001, a quiet end for someone whose vision was anything but. His personality could be quirky, even difficult, but his talent was unmistakable, and his contribution to the medium remains profound.