"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 bathed by such piercing light as to provide their present and future with hope."

Louis Faurer

"Faurer, with these images proves to be an extraordinary artist. His eye is on the pulse of New York City - the lovely Times-Square people - for whom Faurer felt a deep sympathy. Every photograph is witness to the compassion and obsession accompanying his life like a shadow. I am happy that these images survive while the world keeps changing."

Robert Frank, 1994

Louis Faurer was a photographer's photographer. During much of his lifetime, his work was not well known to a broad audience but it was greatly admired by fellow photographers. His work is profoundly honest, empathetic and sensitive, often focusing on quiet moments in the bustling Times Square of New York. He would experiment with reflection, blur, overlaid negatives and the marked graininess resulting from his fondness for the nocturnal. Faurer's New York photographs made in the 1940s and 50s have been undeniably influential on subsequent generations of photographers; his importance to the history of photography and the art world has been recognized.

Born in Philadelphia in 1916 to Polish immigrant parents, Faurer bought his first camera at age 21. After studying drawing and submitting work to Disney Studios while still an adolescent (he was considered for an in-house position), he enrolled in a commercial lettering school. Thereafter, he created advertising posters, worked at several Philadelphia portrait studios and sketched caricatures in Atlantic City. In 1947, he left for New York, where he became a photographer for Junior Bazaar. He soon met Robert Frank through the publication, and the two became friends and shared Mr. Frank's studio. He continued to photograph until 1984, when after being struck by a car, he stopped photography altogether. Faurer passed away in March of 2001. 

Faurer's first solo exhibition was held at Helen Gee's groundbreaking Limelight Gallery in 1959. In 1977, he had his second solo exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan, followed by a 1981 exhibition at the Art Gallery at the University of Maryland. A posthumous show organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2002 traveled to several cities, including San Diego, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Most recently, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Fondation in Paris opened a comprehensive retrospective in September of 2016, which was accompanied by a monograph published by Steidl. Faurer's work is in the permanent collections of museums worldwide.

For further information, please contact Leslie Hammons, Director, at 612-822-1722 or weinsteingallery@gmail.com