Louis Stettner, by David Campany, Sally Martin Katz, James Iffland & Karl Orend, pub.

Over his 80-year career, the American photographer Louis Stettner (1922-2016) explored a range of subjects, from commuters in New York City to Soviet Union factory workers. (A lifelong Marxist, he celebrated the working class.) For all its diversity, however, Stettner’s work is thematically consistent: he sought out beauty in common people and their everyday life. (A combat photographer in WWII, he was left with a lasting belief in the fundamental humanity of the common man.) After the war, Stettner arrived in Paris in 1947, intending to visit for three weeks, but ultimately stayed for five years, studying cinematography. During this time, he forged a lasting relationship with the legendary photographer Brassaï and with the city and its people. Stettner’s work defies categorisation, containing elements of both the New York street photography aesthetic and the lyrical humanism of the French tradition. This major new monograph gives his work the recognition it deserves.