A blizzard hit New York in December 1960, closing schools and businesses. Wandering the streets of Harlem, 22-year-old photographer Neil Libbert noticed a group of kids playing in the snow and began shooting. It wasn’t long before they spotted him and turned the tables, in time-honoured fashion.
Documenting the street games of children was a staple for many leading British photojournalists in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s. In a less wary era, kids played out, often unaccompanied by adults, and their chaotic exuberance made great pictures.
Memorable work was produced by Picture Post photographers Thurston Hopkins and Bert Hardy, street photographer Roger Mayne – who, in 1961, illustrated the Observer’s Review section cover feature titled “The private world of children’s games” – and of course the great Salford-born documentarian Shirley Baker.
Another native of Salford, Libbert also honed his powers of observation and his clandestine approach to his subjects on the backstreets of Manchester in the late 50s, photographing street games, the down-at-heel and life in the snickets. His admiration for American social documentary photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange informed his striking images, and his work opened the door to the Manchester Guardian, which he joined first as a freelancer, then on staff.
In 1960, Libbert persuaded the paper’s features editor, Brian Redhead (later a Today programme presenter), to give him a grant to help him get to the US. In America, he took some portraits for the paper, but would spend most of his time as “a stranger on strange streets, meeting strangers”, camera in hand. This is archetypal Libbert: a witness in the background waiting to “pounce on that unguarded moment, because once people are aware, they pose”. Eye contact is a rarity – until he meets his match.
In Harlem, Libbert’s stealth couldn’t save him. Earlier frames in the sequence (three of which were published in the Guardian on 21 January 1961) show the kids playing, unaware of the photographer’s presence, but that didn’t last long. Once they rumbled him, kids do what kids do, be that in 1960 or 2019, their aim as true as that of Libbert’s Leica.
