Only in New York
Author The Photography Staff of the NY Times, Introduction by David W. Dunlap
- Publish Date: May 07, 2019
- Format: Hardcover
- Category: Photography - Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General
- Publisher: Universe
- Trim Size: 9-7/8 x 7
- Pages: 512
- US Price: $39.95
- CDN Price: $53.95
- ISBN: 978-0-7893-3655-2
Reviews
— Publishers Weekly
“Collects 500 photos from the New York Times’s archives, creating a historical and cultural survey of New York City.”
— Publishers Weekly Big Spring Books Selection
"[This is] what happens when you turn a bunch of talented [New York Times] staff photographers loose in a city as visually cacophonous as New York. They take liberties. They don’t listen to reason. You send them to shoot a City Council news conference in Woodside, Queens, and they come back with three teenagers on a crumbly stoop, drinking Cokes out of long-necked bottles, or a plastic bag stranded in a tree. Who asked for that?
Yet that’s New York, isn’t it? It’s the stuff you’re too busy to notice, or you can’t get to because you can’t be everywhere. It’s what idle hands do when they happen to belong to Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers and there’s a camera on them and nothing else to do. Did you see the reflection of that neon sign in the flooded pothole? Click. Click click click.
If you licked these pictures they would taste like New York. Which is why you don’t lick them.
Five hundred of these photos… are gathered in a new book called “Only in New York,” published by Rizzoli. They cover more than a century in the city, in sickness and in health. Mostly, they’re glimpses of the ordinary in a city that is anything but. Sometimes the moment is more than that."
— The New York Times Lens Blog
"Only in New York is a wonderful, quirky, poignant, funny and often profound look at New York City. The individual photographs are, of course, wonderful. After all, these are the photographers for The New York Times. The differences between photojournalism, street photography, and fine art are irrelevant here. Every image in the book is a solid piece of work on its own. Imagine the New York City Ballet performing The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. Imagine the Naked Cowboy, children inside the crown of the Statue of Liberty, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel at Shea Stadium. Imagine King Kong. Whatever you have imagined, these photos will surprise you. Every one of them catches a moment.
But this book is more than that. It is intentionally a series of diptychs. That’s the thesis here: every photograph has a partner. And in these pairings there is an act of genius. In these pairings, in the distance between them or in ability to hold both images simultaneously in mind, in the contrasts or ironies or contradictions or confirmations, there is a truth about New York.
Only in New York is a history lesson, a sociological examination, an architectural appreciation, a tribute to sports stars and celebrities and ordinary people. At times it’s damn funny. At other times it’s heart wrenching. Its real power, though, is in what you feel when holding two things together.
In other words, Only in New York is a love story." — LensCulture