Arlene Gottfried, whose arresting images of ordinary people in New York’s humbler neighborhoods earned her belated recognition as one of the finest street photographers of her generation, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 66.

Her brother, the comedian and actor Gilbert Gottfried, said the cause was complications of breast cancer.

Ms. Gottfried roamed the streets of New York, camera in hand, finding opportunity at every corner. Much of her work recorded the daily routines and local characters in the city’s Puerto Rican areas, where cultural exuberance coexisted with poverty and urban blight.