Lou was born in Brooklyn and was a member of the Photo League. A group whose members were documenting the “human condition”. I always think of Lou as a “quiet” photographer. He didn’t scream out for attention, but his imagery did. His work, for me, was powerful in its “everydayness”. Powerful in its poetic vision. To be looked at again and again. Each time a new discovery would reveal itself.

“I have never been interested in photographs based solely on aesthetics, divorced from reality,” he wrote in his photo collection “Wisdom Cries Out in the Streets,” published in 1999. “I also doubt very much whether this is possible.”

“My photographs are acts of eloquent homage and deep remorse about the city,” Mr. Stettner wrote of his New York work. “I am profoundly moved by its lyric beauty and horrified by its cruelty and suffering.”