Malcolm X Speaking, Labor union/civil rights rally in support of the New York City school boycott, Upper East Side, Manhattan, 1964 © Builder Levy
Builder Levy enrolled in Brooklyn College in 1959 with the dream of becoming an Abstract Expressionist, but the work didn’t resonate the way he hoped it would. Photography, however, made perfect sense. “It allowed me to get more involved with life,” Levy says.
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Growing up in Bath Beach, a predominantly Jewish and Italian neighbourhood, Levy lived in a housing development built by Donald Trump’s father, Fred. Living through the Jim Crow 1950s, fraught with the spectres of McCarthy and the Cold War, Levy was sensitive to the struggle of people of colour and the working class, becoming politically aware and engaged at a young age.
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“I started taking the camera with me to street demonstrations,’ Levy remembers, recognising the importance of amplifying the fight against oppression and injustice.
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Medallion Lords, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, 1965 © Builder Levy