Phil Penman is a British-born street photographer based in New York City. He has photographed the streets of New York for more than 25 years, mostly in black and white.
He was born in Dorset, England, and has been a photographer since he was 15. He studied photography at the Berkshire College of Art and Design and began working for local newspapers in England, then for British tabloids and broadsheets. A photo agency hired him in Los Angeles and, about six months later, sent him to New York to set up its office there.
Six months after he arrived in New York, he photographed the September 11 attacks. That work is now in the archive of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. His photographs of New York during the pandemic lockdown were acquired by the Library of Congress. His news and magazine work has appeared in The Guardian, Paris Match, Time and The Independent.
His books include Street, New York Street Diaries (teNeues, 2023) and Street Scenes (teNeues, 2025). Street Scenes goes beyond New York, with photographs from Paris, Tokyo and many other cities, in both black and white and color. He also teaches photography workshops for the Leica Akademie.
