Perhaps the seated man in the foreground, beaming at the photographer, is the proprietor. His assistant, barely visible on the left, may be repairing a damaged shoe, the mate of which is in the crook of the arm of the man on the right, who also holds a pair of new dress shoes in his hand. Is the young man to his right his son?
This is Nalewki Street, the commercial center of the Warsaw Jewish Quarter. Six years after Richard Scheuer’s visit, it became part of the Warsaw Ghetto, and was destroyed when the Nazis razed the Ghetto in 1943.
A street photographer must make instantaneous choices regarding focus and length of exposure, depending on the available light. There are always trade-offs. In this case, Scheuer opted for a relatively long exposure, and a medium lens aperture that kept the middle and the background sharp. The old men in their traditional dress and the young boy in a white sailor suit stepping into the store entrance are in sharp focus, but the figures at the sides, dressed in more modern clothing, are in soft focus, and slightly blurred by motion. Scheuer’s use of cut-off figures, out of focus elements and motion blur extends the range of what is acceptable in a photograph, anticipating the street photography aesthetic of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand in the 1950’s and later.
The two painted figures on the shutters echo the two standing men. A symphony of rectangles fills the tightly organized frame. Here we have the full cycle of life: The child in the stroller in the lower right, the two middle-aged men who converse amiably, one engaging the child, and an elderly man with a cane walking out of the frame on the left. The cut-off figures on the right and left sides of this image add to its power. Form and content interweave to make a complete artistic statement.
