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Lewis Baltz, photographer of urban anomie, dies at 69

 
Lewis Baltz’s photos helped capture the rapid transformation wrought by urban sprawl in the ’60s and ’70s.
Getty Images
Lewis Baltz’s photos helped capture the rapid transformation wrought by urban sprawl in the ’60s and ’70s. Getty Images
Published Nov. 29, 2014

Lewis Baltz, 69, whose caustic but formally beautiful black-and-white images of parking lots, office parks, industrial garage doors and the backs of anonymous warehouses helped forge a new tradition of U.S. landscape photography in an age of urban sprawl, died of cancer and emphysema Nov. 22 in Paris.

Bunny Briggs, 92, the elegant and versatile tap virtuoso whose career bridged dance eras, from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's to Savion Glover's, died Nov. 15 in Las Vegas. He danced on the streets of Harlem as a small boy, and on Broadway and The Ed Sullivan Show and at the Newport Jazz Festival as an adult.

Lester Bernstein, 94, a former editor of Newsweek magazine who also wrote for the New York Times, was a foreign correspondent for Time magazine and, as a vice president of NBC in 1960, helped arrange America's first televised presidential debates, died Thursday in Lido Beach, N.Y. The four live presidential debates drew national audiences of up to 70 million people and were widely regarded as a major factor in John F. Kennedy's narrow election victory.

Nancy Teeters, 84, a onetime chief economist for the House Budget Committee who in 1978 became the first woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the body that sets federal monetary policy, died Nov. 17 in Stamford, Conn.

Denham Harman, 98, a research biochemist who asserted that old age was just another disease, and who drew support from medical experts for his claim that aging could be managed — if never quite cured — with vitamins and other so-called antioxidants, died Tuesday in Omaha, Neb.

Allan Kornblum, 65, whose love for poetry and printing led him to create Coffee House Press, a leading independent publisher widely respected for finding and nurturing new authors, died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia Nov. 23 in St. Paul, Minn.

Francis Fraser, 91, a British underworld enforcer known as "Mad Frankie," whose life of crime and torture led to a lucrative retirement chronicling his own grisly deeds in books, films and lectures, and on stage and TV, died Wednesday in London.