Skating the streets of New York, 1960

Photojournalist Bill Eppridge has shown the world a lot through his lens. He has covered wars, heroin addiction, political campaigns, the summer and the winter Olympics, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States and even the assassination of senator Robert Kennedy. Right now the spotlight is on old school images taken in New York. ’60s kids cruising the streets without any hassle of being reprimanded by cops. (Cape Town city council take note.)

The photos were taken by Eppridge for LIFE Magazine, a magazine he already read as a young boy. ‘When I was ten, I waited for the mailman to deliver LIFE Magazine every week and I always enjoyed the photographs by David Douglas Duncan, Robert Capa and Henri-Cartier Bresson. I was fascinated by this work and I felt that it affected the people who looked at these pictures.’

Over the years, I thought there was some power with this medium. If you can do a couple of good things for people in your life, then you’ve lived a good life. (Bill Eppridge in an interview with www.photoworkshop.com)

In the interview with www.photoworkshop.com, Eppridge gave some advice to photographers starting today. ‘I believe our world is at a time right now in which it should be documented completely.’ He says we should all be protectors of our environment and heritage. ‘If we can influence people with photographs, maybe we’ll be able to maintain our planet.’