Arthur Lavine (December 20, 1922 - June 27, 2016) was an American mid-century photojournalist and magazine photographer who, among other achievements, produced significant documentation of New Caledonia during World War 2.

[4] In early 1942 when the United States had already entered World War II, Lavine, then a 19-year-old student, received notice to report for military duty, delaying his graduation.

Lavine documented the lives of New Caledonians, including the Kanak community, focussing mainly on family groups and children, all pictured during casual encounters in village environments.

[6] His imagery, and that of his amateur colleague Corporal Elmer Williams, was a record of a tumultuous and difficult period of change in the archipelago that also brought the PX, Cuban cigars, ice-cream, refrigerators, sophisticated medical care, liquor, Jeeps, and jazz.

[7] Williams' work had been exhibited in late 2006 at the Tjibaou Cultural Centre curated from the Archives of New Caledonia by Dr Prue Ahrens of the University of Queensland, then touring Australia and then the United States, starting in San Diego.

[27] W. S. Di Piero admires Lavine's 'innocent eye' as applied in his street photography, and writes that his "sanguine temperament embraces his subjects but doesn't squeeze the life out of them.

[29] As well as the emerging coffee houses,[25] in that decade Lavine's street photography and photojournalism also covered the working class districts of New York, the demolition of the elevated railway, sharecroppers in Virginia for the Newport News, and farm workers in Kansas, Dakota and Nebraska.

In 1992 Lavine settled in San Diego with his wife Rhoda and continued to produce and exhibit reportage,[20] mood pieces and abstract works.