There are very good reasons why New
York City is such a popular spot with photographers. With its
astounding skyline, boroughs, famous and historic landmarks like the Brooklyn
Bridge, Central Park, and museums, New York offers the widest range of urban photographic
subjects. If that weren’t enough, it also has a bustling and world famous
fashion industry whose photographers have made a name for themselves in style
and couture photography. New York City is also one of those big cities
filled with people from all nationalities, communities and walks of life living
and working in the same space. This automatically opens up vistas of
interpersonal communication, and combinations of dress, food, and non-verbal
communication that no NYC photographers
could miss. It is also the financial capital of the US, and a news hub, so journalistic
Photographers in NYC have an established
business too.
If someone who has never visited
New York were asked to imagine it, it would be an easy task, given how
frequently New York City is photographed and how iconic some of
these photographs are. Any Photographer NYC
worth his salt would have tried to capture one more image of the Statue of
Liberty from an angle no one has seen before. Or another image of Fifth Avenue
with its long line of posh shops. Or the innumerable food stalls lining the
streets downtown. Of course, every few years a Hollywood film will be made
featuring New York in either its minimalist detail tracing stories of
characters trying to survive in New York City, or on a massive scale where
blocks are destroyed by aliens or superheroes.
Photographyin New York City has
been a long-time tradition. Black and white images of pre and post-World War I
and II have sketched a rich tradition of New York. Notable are names like Diane
Arbus, who shot black and white photographs of deviant and marginal peoplelike
circus performers or the differently abled in New York in the 1940s. Robert
Mapplethorpe would deviate from tradition again in the 1960s and 70s to
photograph often controversial aspects of his personal life and of New York.
Poverty and richness, rags and fur coats have received equal attention in New
York’s photography. Even today, photography in
New York is as myriad as is possible. The city witnesses a large
number of click happy tourists every year who visit all those spots made iconic
by the city’s photographers. Journalists and the paparazzi are to be found
aplenty, wielding their cameras and capturing events for posterity. Food,
fashion, theatre, Wall Street, protests, Christmas decorations, billboards and
people are all equally fascinating subjects for photography
in New York.
