NONFICTION - March 3, 1996

GROWING UP IN NEW YORK by Arthur Leipzig. (Godine: $40.) Arthur Leipzig was born in Brooklyn in 1918. He was, for four years, a staff photographer for The Newspaper PM, then a freelance journalist, and has been a professor for the last 28 years at Long Island University. These words are from his introduction to “Growing Up In New York”: “My life as a photographer began in the streets of the city. For me, New York, with its diverse cultures and varied topography, presented a new challenge every day. . . . In 1943, while working on The Newspaper PM, I shot my first major photo essay, ‘Children’s Games.’ The streets were an extension of the home. They were the living rooms and the playgrounds, particularly for the poor whose crowded tenements left little room to play. . . . As I look back at the work that I did during that period I realize that I was witness to a time that no longer exists, a more innocent time. While I know that the city has changed, that the streets are dirtier and meaner, the energy that I love is still there. No matter where I go, I keep coming back to photograph New York.”