Jeff Mermelstein: The Absurdist with a Camera

by Jerome D.

Introduction

Jeff Mermelstein (b. 31 August 1957, New Brunswick, New Jersey) is a New York street photographer and photojournalist whose three decades of Leica colour work on the streets of the city — and subsequent pivot to iPhone as his exclusive shooting tool since 2016 — have made him one of the most original and broadly influential figures in American street photography.

He is the son of Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the United States in 1947. He received his first camera as a Bar Mitzvah present from his older brother at age 13 — a rangefinder — and immediately fell in love with the medium. He studied at Rutgers College and the International Center of Photography in New York. An early formative experience was seeing a Henry Wessel photograph at MoMA; his stated influences include Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Weegee, and Louis Faurer.

His work has appeared in Life, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic. His first book, Sidewalk (1999), was sponsored by Leica and won the European Publishers Award for Photography in 1999. His second major book, #nyc (MACK, 2020) — photographing New Yorkers' phone screens at close range with an iPhone — is one of the most discussed street photography books of the past decade. His third monograph, What If Jeff Were a Butterfly?, was referenced by Daniel Arnold in a 2025 Aperture interview as one of the works he most admired.

He continues to photograph the streets of New York. His ICP teaching programme, in which he explicitly discusses his transition from Leica to iPhone, has made him one of the most visible educators in street photography.

"I work to capture surprise, the real world and the human condition."

Camera Gear Used by Jeff Mermelstein

Film Era: Leica M6 and Leica M-P

Leica M6 — His primary camera from his twenties through to 2016, stated in his own words to Leica Camera: "I have a long history with Leica beginning with my first M6 when I was in my twenties." His first book Sidewalk was sponsored by Leica — the relationship between photographer and brand was explicit and sustained from the beginning. The Leica Camera story directly confirms his M6 use for a specific image: "I quickly took the picture with my Leica M6 and color negative film," describing a 1993 encounter at 79th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Eric Kim, reviewing a video of Mermelstein at work, confirms: "Jeff Mermelstein shoots with a Leica M6 with a 35mm Leica lens and shoots colour film."

Leica M6
Find one at MPB

Leica M-P with Summilux 35mm f/1.4 — His confirmed later Leica body, documented by Shooter Files: "Mermelstein has been most known to shoot with a Leica M-P rangefinder loaded with Fujicolor Superia and a 35mm f/1.4 Summilux lens." The Leica M-P is a quieter, more discreet version of the standard M body, with a larger buffer and the red Leica dot removed — suited to the unobtrusive street work he practised.

Leica MP
Find one at MPB

Canon (specific period) — Shooter Files also confirms he used a Canon camera during one period of his career, though specific model details are not available in primary sources.

Lens: Leica Summilux 35mm f/1.4

Leica Summilux 35mm f/1.4 ASPH — His confirmed primary lens for street work, documented by Shooter Files as his standard setup on the Leica M-P. The 35mm focal length kept him at a natural, close-but-not-extreme working distance from his subjects. He used zone focusing — pre-setting focus to a specific distance — rather than rangefinder focusing in the field, confirmed by Eric Kim's analysis of his video: "He is very quick when he's on the street — using zone focusing to a certain distance." Zone focusing eliminates the rangefinder step entirely, allowing him to react at the speed of instinct.

Film: Fujicolor Superia (colour negative)

Fujicolor Superia (colour negative film) — His confirmed film stock for the Leica M-P era, stated by Shooter Files. Colour was a priority from early in his career — Shooter Files confirms: "Since a young age, Jeff had a strong interest in colours and he fell in love with colour film early in his pursuit of photography." His preference for colour throughout his film era distinguishes him from many of his New York contemporaries who worked primarily in black-and-white.

Current Camera: iPhone (exclusively since 2016)

iPhone (exclusively since 2016) — His confirmed and exclusive camera since 2016, stated across multiple primary sources. LensCulture: "All of the photographs were themselves taken at very close range with an iPhone, which Mermelstein has been shooting with exclusively since 2016, after decades of using a Leica." ICP's own description of his teaching programme confirms the transition as a deliberate career development: "his transition from using a Leica camera to his iPhone camera." His own words: "The project came about while I was in the midst of enjoying using an iPhone on the street, having primarily used a Leica film camera in the past."

His switch to iPhone was not a concession but a creative evolution. The phone's invisibility allowed a different quality of proximity — photographing strangers' phone screens at close range, for instance, something impossible with a rangefinder. His #nyc series, made entirely on iPhone between 2017 and 2020, photographed the text messages visible on New Yorkers' phone screens in public spaces — an act of documentary intimacy that required the phone's form factor to be invisible in an environment saturated with phones.

Technique and Style

Jeff Mermelstein's street photography is defined by colour, close-range instinct, and an eye for the absurd. He has been described as an absurdist with a sense of humour — a fair characterisation of the images in Sidewalk, where New York's pedestrian life is captured at moments of comic incongruity, emotional rawness, and surreal visual coincidence.

His Leica working method was fast and zone-focused — no time spent on rangefinder alignment, relying on pre-set distances and the 35mm Summilux's depth of field to ensure sharpness at close range. He was already shooting and moving before the subject had processed what had happened.

The transition to iPhone represented both a continuation and a transformation of this approach. The phone's invisibility took the stealth of his Leica work to a further extreme — he could now hold the camera at arm's length in a crowd, aimed at a phone screen inches away, without any of the visual signals of a camera being raised. The #nyc series grew directly from this capability: "It really was a significant ingredient to how I got to the point of making photos of texts on phone screens."

His #nyc images make the phone screen itself the subject — text messages in mid-composition, intimate confessions, absurd exchanges, the private made public by proximity and the angle of a screen. The ethical questions this raises — photographing people's private communications without consent — were questions he addressed directly, emphasising his commitment to maintaining the anonymity of his subjects.

How to Shoot Like Jeff Mermelstein

Use zone focusing. Pre-set your focus to your working distance, set an aperture that gives you the depth of field to cover your subjects, and stop thinking about focus. The cognitive space this frees is available for seeing and timing.

Embrace colour from the start. His early preference for colour — in an era when serious street photography was still largely associated with black-and-white — was not a commercial compromise but a creative choice. Colour registers the specific quality of the New York street at a particular moment in time. Shoot colour and commit to it.

Follow the camera to its logical conclusion. The iPhone, for Mermelstein, was not a substitute for the Leica but the next instrument — the one that unlocked a body of work that was impossible with the previous tool. Ask what your current camera cannot do that a different tool might enable, and whether that capability corresponds to an image you genuinely want to make.

Work the absurd. His images succeed because he photographs New York at its strangest and most human simultaneously. Train yourself to notice the comedic and the surreal within the documentary — the detail that makes a scene stranger than it appeared before the camera arrived.

Legacy

Jeff Mermelstein's legacy rests on two distinct bodies of work separated by a decisive technological shift. The Leica colour street photography of Sidewalk (1999) — quick, funny, formally inventive, rooted in a New York of the 1990s that no longer quite exists — is a primary document of its time and a landmark in American colour street photography. Its European Publishers Award confirmed what the street photography community already knew.

The #nyc iPhone work (2020) is something else: a conceptual project that uses the phone's invisibility to access a dimension of public life — private text messages on strangers' screens — that no previous photographic technology made available. Whether this constitutes an ethical expansion or transgression of street photography's traditional practices is a debate that the work itself provokes rather than resolves.

His ICP teaching programme has extended his influence to a new generation of photographers, and the mention of his forthcoming What If Jeff Were a Butterfly? by Daniel Arnold in a major 2025 Aperture interview — as one of the works he most anticipates — confirms his continuing presence at the centre of contemporary street photography's conversation.

Books by Jeff Mermelstein

Sidewalk (1999, Lookout/Leica) — His debut monograph and his defining Leica-era work. Winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography, 1999. The book that established his international reputation as a colour street photographer of the first rank.

Find it at Amazon

Stockport (2019, MACK) — A project made in the English town of Stockport, extending his practice beyond New York for the first time in book form.

#nyc (2020, MACK) — His iPhone era's defining work. Close-range photographs of New Yorkers' phone screens, photographed on iPhone between October 2017 and 2020 and published on a uniform bright-blue background to imitate the lit screen. One of the most discussed street photography books of the past decade.

What If Jeff Were a Butterfly? (forthcoming, MACK) — His next monograph, anticipated by the street photography community and cited by Daniel Arnold in an Aperture interview as one of the works he most looks forward to.

Where to See Jeff Mermelstein's Work

Instagram: @jeffmermelstein — his active account, where his street work continues to appear.
ICP teaching: icp.org — his ICP lesson series on street photography is periodically offered and available to purchase.
Publisher: mackbooks.co.uk — MACK publishes his recent books, available through their website and major photography bookshops.
Leica Camera: The Leica Camera story on his practice — "The Curiosity of the World Deserves Witnesses" — provides the most comprehensive first-person account of his Leica-era working method: leica-camera.com.
Secondary market: Prints available through Artnet.

Conclusion

Jeff Mermelstein photographed New York for decades with a Leica M6 and later a Leica M-P, both fitted with a Summilux 35mm f/1.4 ASPH, loaded with Fujicolor Superia colour negative film, using zone focusing to shoot at speed without rangefinder alignment. Since 2016 he has shot exclusively on iPhone — a transition he has described as both a creative evolution and a practical unlock, giving him access to subjects and proximities that his Leica could not reach.

The camera changed. The instinct for the absurd, the comedic, and the genuinely human did not.