New York is probably the most photographed city in the world. Its iconography is so powerful that it often risks cancelling out any new gaze that approaches it without a clear position.
Skyscrapers, yellow cabs, crowds, urban solitude: everything seems already seen. And yet, the ten projects brought together here prove that New York is far from exhausted as a photographic subject. It remains fertile ground when photographers understand the city not as a backdrop, but as a system, as an experience sustained over time.
In Doormen from Park Avenue, Sam Golanski focuses on a figure that is almost invisible precisely because of its familiarity: the doorman. Within the refined world of Park Avenue, these men embody a silent boundary between public and private space, between displayed wealth and protected everyday life. Golanski does not present them as urban decoration, but as central characters who sustain the social choreography of the Upper East Side. The city emerges through those who guard it, not those who merely pass through.
Christopher Tamas Kovacs proposes a New York suspended in an ambiguous sense of time. His series New York breaks with his own black-and-white tradition to introduce color as a source of tension. Shadows, architecture, and chromatic energy construct a city where past and future seem to overlap. There is no narrative urgency, but rather a sense of continuous cycle, of a city observing itself through its immobile forms.
With New York Psychics, Thomas Freteur enters a less obvious territory. Far from grand urban narratives, his project explores the city’s symbolic margins: tarot readers, mediums, palmists. Starting from small flyers and direct encounters, Freteur maps an alternative New York where the need to believe coexists naturally with contemporary skepticism. The city reveals itself here as a place where rationality and mysticism live side by side without contradiction.
In Sidewalk Theatre, Mathias Wasik understands the street as a permanent stage. His direct, vividly colored images place the individual at the center of the frame, momentarily isolated from the urban flow. New York appears as a play in constant performance, where every ordinary gesture can become a scene. The photographer neither judges nor dramatizes; he observes how the city produces stories without intending to.
Rokas Jankus, in New York City², works from extreme proximity. His photographs capture that brief moment before recognition, when the subject has not yet decided which mask to wear. The street, paradoxically, becomes an intimate space. The city is the least private environment imaginable, and yet it is precisely there that moments of unexpected openness occur.
Josef Buergi turns to black and white in The New York Mosaic to distill the city’s graphic essence. Without color, New York is reduced to lines, contrasts, and volumes. Architecture sets the rhythm, and human figures appear as quiet notes within a larger composition. It is a gaze that seeks the timeless, moving away from anecdote to uncover a lasting visual structure.
Paul Kessel offers a double approach to the city. In Street Scenes, New York is the result of persistence: going out, walking, waiting, editing. Street photography is understood as an accumulative process rather than a hunt for decisive moments. In From My Window, by contrast, the city is observed from stillness. A fixed point of view transforms urban chaos into a contemplative experience, showing that New York can also be introspective.
With Homeless in New York, Steve Hoffman addresses one of the city’s most uncomfortable realities. His project grows out of direct involvement, volunteer work, and sustained contact with people experiencing homelessness. Photography here does not seek visual shock, but sustained visibility. New York appears as a city of extreme contrasts, where abundance and exclusion coexist structurally.
Lisa Cutler’s Red Hook explores a territory in constant transformation. Far from the iconic center, this post-industrial neighborhood appears as an unstable space where reference points disappear and reappear. The constant presence of the Gowanus Expressway functions as both visual and symbolic anchor. The city is defined not by monumentality, but by its intermediate zones, its shifting margins.
Finally, Sole Harlem, by Louise Amelie and Aljaž Fuis, approaches Harlem as a place inseparable from the projections imposed upon it. The project consciously engages with clichés in order to dismantle them from within. Harlem is not an abstract idea, but a lived home. Photography becomes a way of listening to the neighborhood, of translating its rhythm and identity without reducing them to stereotype.
These ten projects do not attempt to define New York. They fragment it, contradict it, and expand it. Each photographer constructs a personal method for engaging with a city that seems to resist any definitive reading. Together, these perspectives confirm that New York remains photographically relevant not because of what it shows, but because of what it forces the photographer to question while working within it.
Doormen from Park Avenue New York City by Sam Golanski
Between busy traffic and streams of yellow cabs at Park Avenue in Manhattan you can spot very dapper looking gents standing calmly at the entrances to multimillion condos of Upper East Side area of New York City. These doormen are the brand of their own, they guard, maintain the buildings and the most look after everyday needs and privacy of the residents.Park Avenue for decades has reputation to attract property buyers among actors, bankers and generally speaking wealthy people from all over the world. Photographer Sam Golanski in 2016 decided to take a closer look into the topic of a doorman while living in NYC… Read More
New York by Christopher Tamas Kovacs
Observing the photographs of Canadian photographer Christopher Tamas Kovacs means introducing oneself to a parallel dimension, in a world where shadows fall within a carefully separated entity. Space and time are completely distorted and merge into a sort of eternal cycle where one has the vision of a future and a past that overlap. In this series “ New York ” Christopher confronts the use of color which is quite a departure from all of his previous works which are in black and white, in fact, he is well known as the creator of the all black and white fine art photography. This work showcases a very unique color palette which gives off a plethora of energy that somehow mixes together the lives of the city with shadows in a seemingly unresolved dualism which is obscured by the static nature of buildings… Read More
New York Psychics by Thomas Freteur
Every single person who lives in New York has probably wondered at least once why there are so many signs offering esoteric and mystical services spread around the city. The little Keano flyer, which you can see in the corner of many advertisements’ frames in most subway trains, was the starting point of my journey within the community of New York’s psychics. I met about thirty psychics – after my first researches and encounters on that topic, I found so much articles about fake practises in psychic shops that I intentionally decided to avoid these ones – from Midtown to the Bronx going through Queens. They are Tarot card readers, mediums, palm readers, healers, etc. I found them via Google, Yelp and word of mouth. Eventually I portrayed half of the ones I met… Read More
Sidewalk Theatre: Street photography from New York City by Mathias Wasik
There are few cities that inspire the modern world as much as New York City does. It’s ever growing, ever rising – a kaleidoscope of American culture. With my series “Sidewalk Theatre” I explore the play that unfolds day by day against the backdrop of New York’s restless concrete jungle. My aim is to expose both the glossy surface and darker underbelly of American culture while portraying a witty, affectionate satire of a diverse and fast-paced city. I shoot mostly in color, with crisp, vivid colors. I put people at the very center of my photography. Secluded from the current of the masses, the focus suddenly lies on this individual. And with the image the story unfolds and enters a dialogue with the spectator… Read More
New York City² by Rokas Jankus
A lot of the people seemed somehow lost to me, either geographically, mentally or even physically. It’s that second before they recognise you, taking the picture, somehow giving you an intimate moment with a person you never gonna see again in your life. They open up, like it would be the most private place, in fact being the least private environment one can imagine. While working as an intern in New York City I shot primarily candid street scenes. That’s what I like to do the most. I am highly interested in people’s interaction with different environments, as an observer… Read More
Josef Buergi Captures New York’s Soul in The New York Mosaic
New York City, a vibrant tapestry of cultures, thrives on relentless energy. It’s a photographer’s paradise, and black and white street photography captures the essence of this dynamic metropolis in a unique way. The absence of color directs the viewer’s gaze to form, light, and shadow, highlighting the city’s architectural drama. Towering skyscrapers pierce the sky, their sharp lines contrasting with the geometric patterns of fire escapes and brickwork. Black and white emphasizes the interplay of light and shadow, transforming ordinary street scenes into graphic compositions. A lone figure standing against a stark building façade creates a timeless image of urban solitude.,, Read More
New York; From my window by Paul Kessel
After a career in clinical psychology and university teaching, I began photography late in life. (one-month shy of my 70th birthday). I always owned a camera before this time but rarely used it. In 2008 I started photography courses at The International Center of Photography in NYC and never stopped until ten years later. Originally, I was interested in portrait photography but discovered street photography and became immersed in it… Read More
Homeless in new york by Steve Hoffman
Working in New York City it is impossible to miss the homeless. They are everywhere ,on the street, in doorways, and in the train stations all over the city. There are several organizations that work with and feed the homeless. One organization that has been working with the homeless for more than 30 years is the Coalition for the Homeless. They have an outreach program that delivers hot meals 7 days a week 365 days a year. During my time working in New York I worked as a volunteer for the Coalition … Read More
New York; Red Hook by Lisa Cutler
I discovered Red Hook by chance, making a wrong turn getting off the Smith Street Train Station in Brooklyn. Over the course of the next two years, I returned to photograph this urban, gritty wonderland. I find a post industrial part of the city where the story is in the quiet details. Roode Hoek, as named by the Dutch colonists who settled there in the 1600s, was named after the point of land that stuck out into the New York Bay, and the red clay soil upon which everything is built. On the surface it seems somewhat desolate, but is in fact in a constant state of flux and activity. It’s an especially disorientating space; constant change makes physical markers for navigating the streets unreliable. What was there one week, would be gone the next. However, there is the looming Gowanus Expressway. If you look, you can find it almost everywhere… Read More
New York; Sole Harlem by Louise Amelie & Aljaž Fuis
The one and only, unique and pure – just Harlem, and nothing else. The title introduces Harlem as a magical place of longing that only works and lives within, and cannot carry its characteristics to the outside world. The words do not only convey the uniqueness of this place, but also the ambiguity of the word as in sole or bottom. The sole, meaning the streets of Harlem, is defined as the setting of the photographic staging. It is staged because a place like Harlem cannot be regarded independently from everyone’s abstract ideas about it, disregarding whether or not they have been there. That is why Harlem has to fight with and try to combine our anticipations and clichés with what is at bottom of the streets – which, in the first place, is home. Harlem is home for people with their own individual perspective on their district of New York. Sole Harlem portrays the people and their home, their soul, and thus visualizes Harlem’s sound… Read More
