Publisher's Synopsis
The vitality of New York City ÔÇô its energy, ambition and beauty ÔÇô has long inspired great photographers, from Berenice Abbott to Garry Winogrand, from Lisette Model to Lee Friedlender. Composed of works selected from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, Life of the City celebrates the great and continuing tradition of photography about New York. The book explores the drama of New YorkÔÇÖs architecture, ranging from cavernous brick canyons and towering stone pinnacles to humble storefronts and tenements. It captures the cityÔÇÖs glittering lights ÔÇô outdoors on the skyline and in the flash of speeding cars, indoors at a string of the urban venues where people come together, from nightclubs and jazz rooms to society galas and parties. Most of all there are New Yorkers themselves ÔÇô the cityÔÇÖs bakers and builders, its politicians and policemen, its solitary nighttime strollers, its morning crowds of pedestrians hurrying to work, its individuals who, in the photographs of Cindy Sherman, seem to be living out some cultural myth of what it means to belong in and to one of AmericaÔÇÖs greatest urban centres.
