est in street vendors and beggars. InMarket St.,
Philadelphia, PA, 1937, the limbs, cane, sign, and
pencil box of a blind man jut out into the picture
frame in sharp focus amidst the blurry figures of
rushed pedestrians.
In 1946, Faurer began commuting to New York
in search of commercial photography work and
found a position at Hearst publications’Junior Ba-
zaar. He met Walker Evans in the offices ofFortune
and Robert Frank atHarper’s. Frank and Faurer
became friends, and they admired and influenced
each other’s work. Frank offered Faurer the use of
his studio; Faurer worked both there and in the
studio of Sol Mednick (whom he knew from Phila-
delphia) until moving to New York in 1948. He also
metHarper’s Bazaar’slegendary art director Alexey
Brodovitch, and attended several classes at Brodo-
vitch’s Design Laboratory while he remained pri-
marily self-taught. The utilization of motion, blur,
and large grain in Faurer’s fashion photography
during this period, however, reflect Brodovitch’s
predilection for dynamism and novelty.
Between 1947 and 1951, Faurer worked prolifi-
cally, creating a distinct and haunting body of per-
sonal work possessing great emotional impact while
maintaining his career as a commercial photogra-
pher. He acted as the great roaming eye of the city,
wandering its streets and peering out of its win-
dows. Everywhere in the photographs people are
looking—at times looking back at the pho-
tographer, but most often looking at the surround-
ing sights of the city. His images capture the
bustling energy of postwar America, as inBroad-
way, New York, NY, 1949–1950, which shows
laughing young women in a convertible barreling
down a street of lighted marquees. Most often,
however, his work conveys a sense of underlying
isolation and disillusionment. He is particularly
drawn to the social outcasts and loners: the retarded
man holding a flower inEddie, New York, NY, 1948,
the eerie twins in5th Ave., New York, NY, c. 1948, or
the woman smoking a joint, oblivious to the men
behind her inBarnum & Bailey Circus Performers,
Madison Square Garden, 1950. Faurer, however,
always approached these subjects with empathy,
never criticism. With themes such as the individual
versus metropolis, along with general mood and
style, many of Faurer’s works from this period dis-
play an affinity with cinema’sfilm noir.
Faurer was particularly attracted to Times
Square at night. His photographs capture the area
at its post-war zenith, before it became a seedy
center of vice. Graphically bold images of lighted
signage, such asNew York, NY, 1948, capture the
dynamism of city life and attest to his continued
interest in commercial lettering. Working primarily
at night provided technical challenges. Using a 35
mm camera (most often a Leica), the most sensitive
films of the time, wide-aperture settings, and slow
shutter speed, he primarily relied on intuition and
experience, not light meters, to achieve proper film
exposure. Many of Faurer’s photographs possess a
dreamlike quality, owing to his use of multiple
exposure and spliced negatives or his seeking out
of reflections [see Multiple Exposures and Print-
ing]. In ‘‘Accident,’’ 1949–52, Faurer capitalizes
upon having accidentally exposed the film in his
camera twice, creating a haunting print that eerily
combines a wedding with a shivering boy at the
scene of an accident.
At mid-century, the Museum of Modern Art
included him in many important group exhibitions,
includingIn and Out of Focus, 1948, andThe Family
of Man, 1955. In 1949, he became a staff photogra-
pher for the short-lived but extravagantly produced
Flair, which in 1950 published his photo essay,The
Eight Million. Faurer relocated to Europe in 1968
for reasons described variously as a desire to pursue
commercial work, emotional distress, marriage pro-
blems, and trouble with the IRS. He returned to
New York in 1974, just as photography was gaining
greater recognition in the art world with more
venues for its display. Faurer began to seek recogni-
tion for his artistic work, an endeavor helped after
meeting William Eggleston and curator Walter
Hopps. During the last decades of his life, he secured
exhibitions, taught photography courses, and
printed earlier negatives while continuing to photo-
graph; however, his work lacked his former inten-
sity. Faurer also supervised color printing of 35 mm
transparencies dating to mid-century. He died in
Manhattan on March 2, 2001.
Faurer is often noted as filling a gap in the history
of American photography between Walker Evans
and Robert Frank, both of whom he knew and
admired. His work is far more emotionally wrought
and offhanded than Evans’s but without the extre-
mely expressive potential and strong sense of com-
position of Frank’s. Faurer’s renewed reputation,
however, rests less on historiographical conveni-
ence than on the intrinsic merits of his strong per-
sonal vision of America expressed in works from
the forties and fifties.
AMANDABROWNSeealso:Eggleston, William; Evans, Walker; Farm
Security Administration; Frank, Robert; History of
Photography: Postwar Era; Multiple Exposures and
Printing; Street PhotographyFAURER, LOUIS