Sonia Handelman Meyer, whose memorable black and white street photography around New York City in the 1940s and ‘50’s reflected her training at the Photo League, a left-leaning collective of photographers who believed their work could change poor social conditions, died on Sept. 11 at her home in Charlotte, NC. She was 102.

She joined the progressive New York-based Photo League in 1943, learning about socially-engaged photography in workshops from one of its founders, Sid Grossman, and other teachers. She soon began making her way around the city, capturing the humanity of ordinary people doing ordinary things.

When the Photo League closed, Ms. Handelman Meyer found work as a morgue librarian at Dell Publishing, a clinical photographer at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, a photographer for the public relations firm Ruder and Finn, a substitute teacher, and a college textbook editor at Prentice Hall.

Her photos have since been exhibited in the United States, Germany and Poland, and are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum of New York the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio and the Mint Museum in Charlotte.