The New York School: Photographs 1936–1963 is a landmark publication by American art historian and curator Jane Livingston, published in 1992 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc. The book was produced in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and later presented at several major museums in the United States. It is regarded as one of the most influential studies of postwar American photography, offering a comprehensive examination of the photographers who transformed New York City into the center of photographic innovation between the late 1930s and the early 1960s.
Rather than defining the New York School as a formal artistic movement, Livingston presents it as a community of photographers connected through shared attitudes toward photography rather than a common style or manifesto. According to the author, these photographers were united by their interest in spontaneity, personal vision, urban life, and the expressive possibilities of the camera. Their work departed from the documentary objectivity that had characterized earlier photographic traditions, instead emphasizing subjective experience, emotional immediacy, and individual artistic expression.