SideWalk by Jeff Mermelstein was the winner of the sixth edition of the European Publishers Award for Photography* in 1999 and as a result, this monograph was born.
From the acknowledgment page, it seems that Leica was involved as a sponsor that year.
For my BOOK LIVES entries, I have always tried to share a bit about the reason/s why I bought a certain book but sometimes, that is not always possible.
In this case, I must have gone through that phase where everything to do with street photography and NYC and shooting without a care IS the only reason I needed.
Somehow life was simpler those days. Now was I wrong?
Anyway, I have not been successful in finding out more about Mermelstein other than the fact that his background was in photojournalism and he lives and works mostly in New York City.
But he does have an Instagram account and these days, it is supposed to mean something, especially for the more ‘experienced’ photographers.
It would be inaccurate/presumptuous for me to conclude that he has moved on to moving images just based on the few entries I encountered on his social media but not wrong to say that he is still active and that’s good to know.
*based on an entry in Wikipedia, the European Publishers Award for Photography existed for slightly more than 20 years and had apparently gone quiet from 2016. It is great pity as the idea of a few established publishers in Europe coming together to publish one volume of great photography works seems like such a wonderful idea.