Louis Stettner’s Classic Photographs Capture Everyday People in New York and Paris

Dedicating himself to capturing ordinary men and women, Louis Stettner described himself as the “world’s best-known unknown photographer”.

Operating both in Paris and New York, Stettner particularly enjoyed photographing commuters, and perhaps his best-known body of work focusing on Penn Station in Manhattan.

Stettner’s documentation of ordinary people stemmed from deeply-held communist beliefs; he was a lifelong Marxist who regularly attended workers’ protests which can be seen in his 1976 photo: Demonstrators on March in Support of United Farm Workers.

In a new major retrospective published by Thames & Hudson, Sally Martin Katz asks why Stettner is not a household name.

“When we think of 20th-century photography, a number of greats come to mind: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evan, Dorothea Lange, to mention but a few. But the name of Louis Stettner is less frequently invoked, and then perhaps only by academics and scholars of the history of photography,” writes Martin Katz.

Martin Katz speculates that it is perhaps because Stettner never really attached himself to either New York or Paris the way many of the great mid-20th century photographers did.

Who Was Louis Stettner?

Louis “Lou” Stettner was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 7, 1922, and describes his photography as “Humanist Realism”, believing that staging a photograph was immoral.

The Great Depression had a profound influence on his later work, fostering his deep empathy for the working class and marginalized communities. He was inspired by photographers like Sid Grossman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Weegee (Arthur Fellig).

During World War II, Stettner served in the U.S. Army. It was during this time that he honed his photography skills, working as a combat photographer in the Pacific theater.

After the war, Stettner returned to New York. He became actively involved with the Photo League, a group of socially conscious photographers committed to documenting life in New York City. He moved the Paris in the 1950s and became involved with the city’s artistic community.

Louis Stettner is published by Thames & Hudson.