Life on the street

You can see a lot of Levitt in Aarons’s work, his interest in children especially. They’re a frequent presence in “Man in the Street: Jules Aarons Photographs Boston, 1947-1976,’’ which runs at the Boston Public Library through June 4. Other frequent elements are signage, graffiti, and a general low-grade energy.

Aarons’s pictures are neither fussy nor celebratory. There’s nothing clinical or overly demonstrative about them. What consistently comes through in his pictures is an abiding, clear-eyed curiosity — a muscular appreciation of urban dailiness. “Just people making do and relating to other people’’ was how he described the essential subject matter of his New York peers. Aarons could just as well have been describing his own work.

Most of the 55 pictures in the show were taken between 1950 and 1960. All are black and white. That’s fitting. Those were not vibrant years for Boston. The shadow of the Depression lingered, and the New Boston of urban renewal had yet to arrive.

For a photographer, the absence of urban renewal was an advantage. The West End, which hadn’t become Charles River Park yet, was one of Aarons’s two favorite haunts, along with the North End. The city was smaller then (or at least felt that way), denser, more tribal. There’s a sense in the show of Boston being not so much city as array of adjoining villages.

The street — the sidewalk, really — was where the action was. Few people had TVs, even fewer had cars. We see guys hanging on the corner, young women primping, old men presiding, kids playing. Always there’s the spectacle of people being looked at — and looking right back. It’s the democracy of the urban eye.