About this Video
An intimate portrait of the 80-year-old African American street photographer Louis Mendes, who began his career in 1953 as a door-to-door baby photographer in Harlem. Taking street portraits across the city, through the civil rights movement, the drug epidemic, crime, and poverty, Mendes forged a living with his 1940s Speed Graphic press camera. Now a New York legend with 37 photographer apprentices, he reflects on the challenges and joys of a life shaped with his camera by his side.