Martin Elkort

Selected Images

Martin Elkort was an acclaimed black and white street photographer whose work regularly appears in major publications, galleries and museums in the United States.

His early black and white photography work, c.1945 to 1956, features the fabled Lower East Side of New York City, with its diverse populations, the myriad streets and alleys of the city, and the Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn.

He studied fine arts at The Cooper Union Art School, the Art Student's League, and the Pan-American School of Art in New York and worked in advertising art and photography. Elkort credits his graphic arts studies with sharpening his eye for photography. He also studied with individual photographers such as Aaron Siskind, Paul Strand, Lou Stouman, Imogen Cunningham and others at the Photo League in New York and other venues.

Near the end of his life he was often found wandering neighborhoods of Los Angeles or San Francisco with his cameras, following his lifelong mission documenting, through black and white photography, the life of the streets.