From Central Park to Katz s delicatessen, the Flatiron Building to Battery Park, this serene and beautiful paean to New York paints a unique picture of the world s most vibrant city. Imagine a New York devoid of people, its empty streets, bridges and waterways as silent and magnificent as an Ansel Adams landscape. This is the New York that Christopher Thomas reveals in duotone photographs that are at once haunting and nostalgic. Employing a large-format Polaroid camera, Thomas shot many of these images in the early hours of the day or with long exposures. The result is a rare glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge without pedestrians; Grand Central Station without commuters; Fifth Avenue without cars, vendors, workers or shoppers. Not only do these photographs allow viewers to appreciate the spatial and architectural splendor of these New York City icons-they also evoke a dreamlike feeling that is unusual in visual depictions of the city. Timeless, yet unmistakably contemporary, this collection by an internationally acclaimed photographer is an important addition to the pantheon of photographic essays of New York’s most beloved settings.

Old New York lives and breathes once again in these rare original three-dimensional photographs, showing the city we love at its nostalgic best. Here are the first skyscrapers, the old street markets, the wharves, street cars and elevated trains, and our New York ancestors at work and play.

Only in New York: Photographs from Look Magazine
by Donald Albrecht, Thomas Mellins

Then and Now and Early New York

Spanning more than 100 years, New York: 365 Days is a spectacular collection of then-and-now photographs that capture the rhythms and moods of the greatest city in the world. Selected from the vast archive of The New York Times, the extraordinary images in this book include many rarely-seen moments, with stops at famous landmarks and memorable events as well as a dizzying array of evocative everyday New York scenes. Featuring an introduction by bestselling New York writer Gay Talese, New York: 365 Days offers a portrait of Gotham that natives and visitors alike will find riveting.

Old Brooklyn in Early Photographs, 1865-1929
by William Lee Younger

Through the Decades

New York in the Sixties
by Allan R. Talbot

New York, New York

From 1906 to 1934, Eugene de Salignac shot over 20,000 stunning 8×10-inch glass-plate negatives of New York City. As sole photographer at the Department of Bridges/Plant and Structures during that period of dizzying growth, he documented the creation of the city’s modern infrastructure–including bridges, major municipal buildings, roads and subways. For years, de Salignac’s remarkably lyrical photographs have been featured in books and films, but never credited to their author. New York Rises, which will accompany a traveling exhibition, is the first monograph to present this unprecedented work as an aesthetically coherent oeuvre by a photographer with a unique vision. As meticulous in his record keeping as he was creative in his photography, de Salignac left five handwritten logs that identify each negative by place and exact date. This information is complemented throughout the book by narrative captions expanding on themes such as accidents, bridges, workers and the Depression. Essayist Michael Lorenzini unearths primary sources to reconstruct de Salignac’s biography and Kevin Moore explores the photographer’s work in the context of other masters of the period, including Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott.

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure
by David Freeland

From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn’t called “the city that never sleeps” for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan’s infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history. Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it’s possible to uncover skeletons of New York’s lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.

New York State of Mind
by Martha Cooper

In 1975, New York City was bankrupt. Crime was at an all-time high, street muggings were commonplace, buildings were crumbling, entire neighborhoods were abandoned by landlords as residents fled to the suburbs, and the federal government couldn’t care less. Nevertheless, intrepid documentary photographer Martha Cooper was inexorably drawn to this embattled but irresistible urban mecca. Moving from the quiet shores of Narragansett, Rhode Island, Cooper fell in love with lawless New York, where the citizens reveled in the “anything goes” atmosphere and prided themselves on their survival strategies. She zipped around the city in a beat-up Honda Civic with no qualms about making U-turns to shoot a quick photo or double park whenever, wherever. Her friends complained that she drove like a cabbie and Cooper took that as a supreme compliment. In 1977, Cooper landed a staff position at the New York Post, and for the next three years she canvassed the city daily, shooting every kind of assignment imaginable. From blizzards to beaches, rooftops to Central Park, Cooper’s photographs, collected here for the first time, reveal the true New York State of Mind.

Destination New York
by Philippe De Baeck

New York Life at the Turn of the Century in Photographs
by Joseph Byron

Photographs of New York Interiors at the Turn of the Century
by Joseph Byron

New York
by Christopher Bliss

360º New York
by Nick Wood

Manhattan: An Island in Focus
by Jake Rajs

This enormous, 12″ x 18″ book with 220 carefully composed shots and 12 gatefolds should be the New York photo book of the season. Berenholtz (Panoramic New York) does not match 19th-century Paris photographer Eugene Atget’s elegant encyclopedism, but his compositions exude the patience and calm needed to get the money shots: the Cloisters, afternoon shadows striping the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s solarium, the recently replaced Planetarium, the familiar interior and exterior orbits of the Guggenheim. And given that the book was in preparation a year before September 11, there are monumental pictures of the World Trade Center, captured in more lights and at more angles than many people will conceivably want or need. Yet even the most jaded photo connoisseur will find Berenholtz’s pictures of Grand Central Station spectacular, and the Times Square and full skyline panoramas breathtaking. The shots of more anonymous facade details, lesser known parks, subway stations, and bridges other than the Brooklyn feel fresh. The light and the weather play starring roles here, as pains seem to have been taken to eliminate people and cars. Berenholtz used no filters, but coaxes deep and often surprising colors out of the skies and facades. If the lush printing can sometimes feel a little late-’90s glitzy, the whole strikes an excellent balance between garish and grounded, much like New York itself. — Reed Business Information, Inc.

The same book as above, but a much smaller version:

New York New York: Mini
by Richard Berenholtz

Top of the City: New York’s Hidden Rooftop World
by Laura Rosen