Bryant Park, New York City

Though the men in this photograph sit near one another, they appear isolated in their own private worlds. N. Jay Jaffee reveals an experience of living in a city: though we may be surrounded by people, we can still feel alone. A native New Yorker, Jaffee returned to the city after serving in World War II. He purchased his first camera in 1947 and began taking photography classes at a union hall with Sid Grossman.

According to Jaffee, “The photographs I made [after the war], although not mainly political, revealed my sympathies. They are of working people who lived ordinary, unglamorous lives. They were, in a sense, a reflection of who I was. To photograph them was a way of ennobling their existence—and affirming my own.”