Highlights

Well known aviation photographer Howard Levy passes away.

We are sadden to hear that Howard Levy has passed away. Howard was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Howard's photographs were published in may magazines all over the world.

Howard Levy passes away
(Asbury Park Press)

Howard Levy, 88, of Freehold, one of the nation's outstanding aviation photographers, died Friday, Jan. 29, 2010, at home. Mr. Levy took his first airplane photograph at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, not far from his home in 1936 at the age of 15. He sold his first picture a year later. Since then, he has appeared in dozens of publications, including the Smithsonian Magazine, Look, AOPA Pilot, Sport Pilot, Private Pilot, Kitplanes, Pro-pilot, Janes and Air Progress. His work appeared in foreign magazines in England, France, Italy and Germany. Among the tens of thousands of photos he took were pictures of many one-of-a-kind aircraft. In 2003, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Symposium of Photographers. In 2005, the staff of Kitplanes presented him with a Silver Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award. The American Helicopter Society presented him with their Gold Circle Award in 2005. He was a founding member of the American Aviation Historical Society in 1956 and was a founding member of the Aviation/Space Writers Association. He served in the Air Corps as a photographer in World War II in Africa, Sicily and Italy.

Reflections from Jay Miller

I first met "Howie" - as most of us called Howard Levy - in 1969. I was taking airplane photos at a small airport on Long Island and a mutual friend and fellow photographer, Frank Strnad, introduced us. Like just about every other airplane enthusiast on the planet, I had seen Howie's photos in a variety of magazines and many books. Not the least of the former was the then-popular "Air Progress". But Howie's photos were everywhere. We hit it off in a hurry - which was easy to do with Howie - and from that day until Howie's final flurry of photos this past week, we kept in touch.

Howie was the last of a unique clique of aviation photographers that first came to the fore during the 1930s. Among the select few who populated this widely dispersed but tightly knit fraternity were Peter Bowers, Erwin "Pete" Bulban, Art Krieger, Harold Martin, Gordon "Gordy" Wililams, and Emil Strasser - now all gone. They were great shooters and they were absolutely dedicated to their craft in an era when 616 format cameras and Kodak Plus-X and Tri-X films were by far the dominant players in the business. Darkrooms were a given, as was home processing and printing; the digital world wasn't even a science fiction prophesy when these men were in their heyday.

During Howie's era, images were sent to friends and traded in the form of original negatives. The word jpeg didn't exist anywhere on the planet. When an airplane of interest was photographed, Howie and his pals often took a dozen or more of almost exactly the same shot - and then sent an original negative to their group of trading buddies. This went on constantly - particularly between the members of Howie's small clique - and in fact lasted as long as most of the members were alive. As a result, there remains a lot of cross-pollination among the various collections. Today it is sometimes difficult for researchers and historians to determine who, exactly, the original photographer was for any given photo.

In the early 1970s, Howie and his wife Shirley spent several days with Susan and me during the course of a long trek in search of unusual airplanes. It was a lot of fun watching Howie in action - particularly when he climbed up seriously tall ladders to get high- angle perspectives on his subjects or when he used fill-flash in the middle of the day (something that was foreign to me at the time - but which I later adopted and continue to use as these words are written). Being not a lot over five feet tall, Howie was not a physically large man - but he made up for any height shortfall with an abundance of energy and a lot of innovation.

Howie, at the time of our Texas tour, was a serious believer in Olympus and Bronica cameras. He carried several of each with him wherever he went. And when I say carried, I mean it. His body was festooned with cameras and straps and flash gear - all reasonably well organized and all accessible, depending on the photo subject and
the task at hand.

I am pleased that ISAP honored Howie with our Lifetime Achivement award several symposiums back. I think he was pleased with that, as the award is noted in his obituary. As great as he was and as thorough as he was, he received few major pats on the back for his efforts - and I think the ISAP honor gave long-overdue justification
to a lifetime of extraordinary work and accomplishment.

It was great to have had Howie as a friend - and mentor.

Jay