New York, New York

The exhibition's design, also the brainchild of Zalkind, is something worth mentioning. Strikingly, Zalkind had the walls painted a strong yellow: "It's the color of the mustard at Nathan's in Coney Island," he says. Against this mustard background, the photos stand out like jewels. Zalkind went classic with the framing, putting just about everything in cream-colored mattes and painted-black wood moldings, long the standard of elegance for photography presentation. But it was more than just a chic choice: The framing unifies the disparate photos, simplifying the overall look of the densely installed exhibit -- a necessity, because Zalkind crammed in so many photos that he didn't have room for even one more.

The most important aspect of Zalkind's design for Street Level is the arrangement of the installation in loosely chronological order, beginning with photos from the late nineteenth century and winding up with those from the early 21st. One of the great advantages of a chronological installation is that movements and styles, and their interrelationships, are automatically evident, allowing Zalkind to cogently present the development of street photography and reveal its golden age in the mid-twentieth century.

Unfortunately, there is no signage indicating how viewers should proceed through this large show. To follow the course that was set by Zalkind, begin to the right of the Singer's entrance, go around the perimeter of the room, then cross to the angled walls in the center, then go back out the door and down the hall to the atrium.

One of the first photos on display is "Untitled (Woman and Children with Baskets)," an 1890s gelatin silver print by the legendary Jacob Riis. The shot is taken at an angle from across the street, so that the curb creates a diagonal line leading the eye up and to the right. The woman and the group of children sitting on the sidewalk are immigrants, as indicated by their clothing, and they're poor, as indicated by their meager selection of baskets for sale. So Riis was already doing something -- depicting outsiders such as immigrants, the impoverished and other marginalized individuals -- that is still dominant in street photography.

The work of another early photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, exemplifies a different approach. In a group of photogravures from 1911, he uses New York's grandeur and enormous size as the subject of the pictures. This style, too, has endured and is often seen in contemporary photography, but Riis's way is still predominant as far as street photography goes.

As the show gets to the 1920s and 1930s, styles gradually begin to shift as modernism becomes established in photography. Some works, like "Fire, West Side Rooming House," a 1936 gelatin silver print by Weegee, are imbued with psychological content. In the photo, a crowd of onlookers morbidly surrounds the collapsed ruins of a burned-out building. In others, such as "Steelworkers-Bolt Boss," a 1931 gelatin silver print by Lewis Hine, there's a political agenda -- in this case, the left-wingish glorification of the laborer.

Many of the street photographers of the 1930s and '40s were left-leaning, which, sadly, caused them lots of trouble during the Red Scare. Nearly all of the socially aware photographers working at that time in the city were somehow associated with the New York Photo League, and in 1947, it was officially listed as a subversive organization. Zalkind has a special interest in the members of the league; he's previously exhibited their work and includes some of them in the current show, such as George Gilbert, Sol Libsohn, Ruth Orkin, Bill Witt and Jack Manning.

Street photography hit its high point in the 1950s and '60s with the work of William Klein, Garry Winogrand and especially Diane Arbus, who is represented by two marvelous gelatin silver prints, 1965's "A Young Man and His Pregnant Wife" and 1967's "Blonde Girl with Shiny Lipstick." In the photos from this period, there's a palpable distance between the photographer and the subject. And the subjects -- even the children in the Klein photos, such as "Gun 1," a 1955 gelatin silver print -- are threatening and menacing, yet ultimately sad. That's not the approach Don Donaghy takes, but his candid '60s shots of people on the city streets are still right on the money for the period.

Donaghy now lives in Boulder and is one of several Colorado-based photographers that Zalkind was able to include in Street Level. The others are Alan Rabold, Mark Sink, Joe Dallenbach and Laura Merage, who are all represented with photos that date back to the '80s and '90s.

Some of the newest photos, which finish out the show, are the remarkable large-format C-prints taken by Jeff Mermelstein, which depict views of the aftermath of 9/11. The first of them, "Ground Zero," shows two firemen on duty, one wiping the dust from his eyes while the other looks up at the sky.