The City

About this book

New York isnt what it used to be so why havent New Yorks photographers and photographic books caught up with reality? Why do picture-makers continue to mimic the gritty glamour and aggression of William Kleins New York images or stalk up and down Fifth and Madison Avenues paying peculiar homage to Garry Winogrand or struggle to rediscover the romance of Nan Goldins Lower East Side on streets now clogged with Starbucks and designers tenement-scaled emporia? What makes Mitch Epsteins most recent book The City particularly interesting is witnessing Epsteins attempt to breathe life back into a classic albeit tired genre. Instead of the usual raucous juxtapositions of visual clichspictures crammed with street corner sturm und drang and urban gargoylesThe Citys elliptical narrative unfolds quietly. Theres a meditative almost medicated calmness to the books color still lifes and cityscapes: the droll display of overwrought deli cakes; a street festival shooting gallerys targets featuring the faces of Timothy McVeigh Amy Fisher and Hitler offering discounted prices for kids; the sports jacket carefully folded and placed on the grass in Central Park whose banal but eerie presence suggests anything from a lunchtime nap to murder. To complicate matters these images are interspersed with black-and-white portraitsof Epsteins wife daughter friends and acquaintancesthat are equally enigmatic. Some subjects smile; some look into the distance. Still others stare backwith willful intent or unable or uninterested in hiding their vulnerabilitythrough the cameras lens. As complex and beautiful as Epsteins photographs of New York situations are as intimate as his portraits might be The City ultimately creates something surprising; the opportunity to ponder what photography can and cannot reveal about our public lives and our most private selves.By Marvin Heiferman