Street photographer Vivian Cherry dies aged 98

Vivian Cherry, a street photographer whose gritty black & white images documented a changing New York city for more than 60 years, has died. She was 98.

Although not as well known as some of the photographers she was inspired by, Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt and Paul Strand, her work carried similiar themes, often showing finely observed details of ordinairy people in urban spaces.

“As soon as people see a camera, they change, and what you see you lose,” she said in an interview with Bob Edwards on SiriusXM Satellite Radio in 2008.

“You have to be very fast, you have to look at their expressions and their backgrounds and your exposure. They all have to come together instantly.”

According to her obituary in The New York Times, Cherry's work appeared in Life, Collier’s, Redbook, Popular Photography and other magazines and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Public Library.

Cherry continued to work even late in life. Her last exhibition, "Helluva Town," was held in June last year at New York's Daniel Cooney Fine Art gallery.

Her son and only immediate survivor, Steven Schmidt, confirmed her death this week. She had been living in Manhattan until late last year, where she had been working on a book of her photos, many of which have never been published.

You can read more about Cherry's life in her obituary in The New York Times, along with images of her work.