New York is the most photogenic city in the world, serving as the subject of many of the greatest photographs ever taken since the advent of the art form in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. From its rising skyscrapers to its fast-moving denizens, New York offers picture takers an ever-changing, always engaging canvas. “Through all the ways it articulates itself, through its incomparable density of feeling and meaning, New York City remains a singularly vibrant place — and subject — that continues to captivate the eye, the mind, and the soul,” Steve Hamburg writes in the introduction to the new book New York: A Photographer’s City (Rizzoli, March 2011, $45). Collecting more than two hundred images from more than one hundred artists, the book features contemporary photos taken in a post-9/11 world, examining “New York’s shift from the centralized and vertical to the outward and horizontal,” Hamburg notes.
Larry Racioppo, “Sunbather and Giglio,” chromogenic color print, 1998) (courtesy the artist / © Larry Racioppo)
Meanwhile, in the foreword, Elisabeth Sussman looks at another development that makes these photos different from the iconic images of the past: color. “Previously, New York’s image had always seemed tethered to the beauties of black and white, to the chiaroscuro of the grayscale, as if lack of color was the equivalent of the grim, the dour, the tough, the architectural, the contrasts between night and day that became trademarks of the city’s psychology and geography,” Sussman explains. “The images collected here are a revelation of a very special sort because they force the viewer to register the hues of light, weather, night, day, streets, and stone, and the cacophony of products, signs, and building surfaces that constitute the kaleidoscope of urban experience.” Edited by Marla Hamburg Kennedy, the deluxe hardcover features photographs by a who’s who of the contemporary art world, including Jenny Holzer, Roe Ethridge, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vik Muniz, Tony Oursler, Jeff Mermelstein, James Welling, Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Catherine Opie, Lucas Samaras, Doug Aitken, Thomas Struth, William Wegman, Abelardo Morell, Ryan McGinley, Joel Sternfeld, and many others. The book is organized thematically, grouped into series of photos depicting bicycles, hands, masses of people seen from above, architectural structures, solitary figures, yellow panoramas, and “for rent” signs.
Vincent Laforet, “Coney Island, June 18th,” inkjet print, 2006 (courtesy the artist and Rizzoli / © 2006 Vincent Laforet)
Among our favorites are Pascal Perich’s “Seungling on the Manhattan Bridge,” a portrait of a young woman looking out over a barely visible city; Spencer Tunick’s untitled print of the top half of a man sticking out of a pothole in the middle of the street; Vincent Laforet’s “Coney Island, June 18th” and “Bryant Park, May 31st,” overhead shots of people relaxing on the beach and the grass, respectively; Andy Freeberg’s “Pace Wildenstein,” a shot of the nearly all-white front desk of the gallery, the top of an employee’s head just peeking out from behind a computer; Timo Stammberger’s “Underground #11 (New York City),” taken deep in the subway; and Richard Galpin’s trio of illustrative peeled photographs. One of the best things about New York: A Photographer’s Eye is that it eschews the obvious, instead compiling unusual and unexpected works that will appeal to native and adopted New Yorkers as well as tourists and other visitors.