NEW YORK, Sidewalk Closed

Photobook by Barbara Wolff
Published by Lunik Verlag

In almost timeless black and white photographs, Ms. Wolff shows us the New York of today, as a post- pandemic city that has risen after a dark and destructive time. She chose to stay in four different parts of the city to give her a range of perspectives in changing surroundings. As she wandered through New York with light camera equipment, she was sometimes accompanied by local photographers who contacted her through her daily Instagram posts – and it was her followers who drove her picture stories forward.

Although New York had already been much photographed, she was able to wrest her own images with a broad depth of field. Indeed, the precision of her imagery reveals many levels of New York life that goes beyond simple portrayal. Her photography reveals the dream destination of many tourists as well as the residents’ hopes and struggles for survival. There are the competing viewing platforms, which serve more for presentation purposes than for the view. And there are images of hopeful self-awareness trips that residents and tourists seek among the urban canyons between the high-rise buildings or along the East River. And, again and again, there are New York’s construction workers, such as those holding their lunch break on the pillars of the Oculus in One World Trade Center, who involuntarily bring to mind the classic “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” image of New York, from 1932. The myth lives on.

Ms. Wolff shows us poetic moments, such as the preparation for a marriage proposal against a smog-darkened skyline. Or moments of longing – with a view of three women on the Staten Island Ferry at the southern tip of Manhattan. But she also creates magical distillations through multiple exposures of the Grand Central Station or the view of the patterns in the city at night from Summit One Vanderbilt.

The book, which is structured in sections such as “Marry me,” “Welcome to Hell,” or “Yes, we can,” reflects precisely that hymn to the city so full of contradictions that Max Frisch wrote about.

“New York as a challenge – where I could rely for decades on not dozing off, on not relaxing, as in the Engadine or in Paris, on being in a place that would shake me every day: I HATE IT, I LOVE IT … I DON’T KNOW …”

— (from Max Frisch, Drafts for a Third Diary, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010).

The attached captions show the locations that Ms. Wolff visited. The picture sections are introduced in an essay by Daniel Blochwitz, who works as a freelance curator and author specializing in photography. He lived in New York for many years himself and now lives in Switzerland. In his essay, he reflects on the city and its significance as a perpetual photographic theme and also reflects on his own experiences during his time in New York.