Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Photographer Who Documented Jewish Lower East Side, Dies at 98

Rebecca Lepkoff, a photographer who documented Jewish life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, has died. Lepkoff, who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood there, died Sunday at 98.

Her series of photographs showing the Lower East Side was taken in the 1940s and 1950s.

Lepkoff lived a portion of the year in Vermont, where she photographed the hippie community of Pikes Falls, according to an obituary in the Commons, a Vermont publication.

In New York, she was a member of the Photo League, a group of acclaimed photographers who aimed to photograph how ordinary people lived. The group was disbanded during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

“She lived a long and incredible life,” said her son, Jesse, according to the Commons. “She was an amazing artist, mother and person.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.