A superb record of a photographer’s love affair with New York.
The many faces of New York City are captured vividly in this stimulating collection of pictures and commentary by an acclaimed photographer.
Forss taught himself photography while working as a messenger in New York in the 1970s and then started selling his prints on the streets; commercial assignments, gallery shows, and books followed. The over 70-odd black-and-white pictures collected here cover a wide range of scenes. We see zebras wrestling at the Bronx Zoo; sunlight filtering through the leaves in Central Park; July Fourth fireworks over the harbor; enigmatic double exposures, composed for a Saks Fifth Avenue campaign, of languid mannequins in glittering dresses hovering over prosaic streetscapes. There is an intimate photo of a cooped-up ivy plant gesticulating wildly at the bleak view out a Brooklyn apartment window, grand portraits of Manhattan skyscrapers bathed in stunning sunlight, and, most New York–ish of all, photos that blend intimacy and grandeur, including several shots of the Brooklyn Bridge soaring over narrow neighborhood streets and an exuberant scene of kids and a dog romping in the Washington Square fountain beneath the triumphal arch. Then there are the atmospheric Manhattan cityscapes, Forss’ trademark. From on high we see skyscrapers glowing with lights, melting into an indistinct horizon in the dusky, chiaroscuro twilight; from below we see lower Manhattan erupting from the harbor’s waterline. The most iconic photos spotlight the lost twin towers: in one we see them marshaling a phalanx of skyscrapers, gleaming in evening sunlight against ominous clouds; in another, they center a mysterious, dreamy skyline, seen in outline through light and fog from across the Hudson. Forss comments on each image in a paragraph or two, with technical details and narrative snippets that have a lyrical matter-of-factness. (“I was watching and waiting for some ‘magic’…with my camera ready to take a picture, when this Bowery lady raised her drink in a salute.”) The book’s one problem is the small size and indifferent quality of the reproductions; still, these images are arresting enough to make one hope that they will be redone in a glossy coffee-table format that can do them justice.
A superb record of a photographer’s love affair with New York.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499070927
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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