MetaFilter posts tagged with photography and NYC

Helen Levitt, RIP

mudpuppie — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:52:08 -0800

Photographer Helen Levitt, known mostly for her New York street scenes, has died at 95. Here's a recent interview. (Links on site open in new window/resize by default.)

I walk the same streets. Why don't I notice these things?

grumblebee — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:30:46 -0800

I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention. As it happens, it's my job to pay attention, and I've started this blog to keep a record of what I see.

Toilet Confessions

dhammond — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:36:24 -0800

Tired of getting busted for illegally peeing* in New York City? Try Diaroogle.com, a toilet search engine that "helps you find quality public toilets from your mobile phone." *This post is really just a roundabout way of linking to the very excellent Courthouse Confessions blog while simultaneously satisfying my urge to post about toilets.

Short and Scrappy

Stynxno — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:17:14 -0800

Mexican and Latin Immmigrants as Superheroes [ via guanabee ]

Jill Freedman

Armitage Shanks — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:16:37 -0800

Influenced by the Modernist documentarian André Kertész, with references to the hard-edged, black-and-white works of Weegee and Diane Arbus, this self-taught photographer captured raw and intimate images, and transformed urban scenes into theatrical dramas. More photos at jillfreedman.com.

Go ahead, hurt me, I won't press charges.

Xurando — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:51:20 -0800

Ever have a job working for a record label on a street crew. And yer puttin up publicity posters on lightpoles for an artist like Rocko and some asshole won't stop takin yer picture. Whadda you do then? Break his friggin camera.

Touch not my anointed.

sklero — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:45:25 -0800

Brooklyn Storefront Houses Of Worship. Amateur photos of 100 storefront houses of worship in Brooklyn, NY.

Yet more B&W NYC (and Paris) photos for your enjoyment.

CunningLinguist — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:23:03 -0800

Louis Stettner: Atmospheric black and white photos of Paris and New York by Brooklyn-born photographer who now lives in France. Some are sexy, some amusing, some poignant. A series on Penn station in the 1950s is especially nice, and a big contrast to the candy colored Mad Men palette. Beware mispelled main url. via.

NYC photos 1968-1972

CunningLinguist — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:06:50 -0800

"New York City 1968-1972" Some very compelling black and white street photography by Paul McDonough. via

Crusty Row, Thompkins Square Park, Lower East Side and Me

Stynxno — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:06:10 -0800

The Wedding of Amy and Jewels Bob Arihood, neithermoreorless.blogspot.com, takes pictures of Tompkins Square Park, Astor Place, Avenue A and other places in New York City.

#7: Ten percent of all city space shall be open land where you can "touch the dirt"

salvia — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:26:49 -0800

"First we kill the architects..." Photographer Danny Lyon [1, 2, 3, 4] offers ten suggestions for New York City. Suggestion #6: "Leave the World Trade Center excavation exactly as it is and use the space as a freshwater pond planted with pink, white, and yellow lilies..." His essay is only one of many from names you'll recognize in a book called Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. An associated exhibition opened yesterday [museum, NYT review]. Is New York City moving in the right direction? Is your city? [via] Footnotes: * It might also be interesting to see what others think about the direction of NYC. (Though only eleven people had expressed their opinion as of this posting.) * Background on Lyon's suggestion #7: he titled a collection of Polaroids of his children I Like to Eat Right on the Dirt.

Harlem-13-Gigapixels

LinusMines — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:12:50 -0800

On a summer afternoon in 2006, New York photographer Gerard Maynard captured his neighborhood from a rooftop at 7th Avenue and 110th Street. The resulting 2,045 photographs, stitched together, comprise a 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem's skyline. Best viewed with HDView option (MS Internet Explorer only).

Speaking of vertigo...

Dave Faris — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:41:45 -0800

Peter B. Kaplan is a New York Photographer who made his name by climbing to high locations and taking amazing super-wide angle shots since the 70's -- most notably, the Statue of Liberty restoration project. He recently had to stop after 40 years because he started suffering from vertigo. After laying off ginkgo biloba, Kaplan’s vertigo and fear of heights has apparently disappeared.

Marvelous NYC photographs by Irwin Klein

CunningLinguist — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:20:58 -0800

Photographs of Manhattan 1964-1969 By Irwin Klein. Immigrants, storefronts, gangs, mafiosi, street scenes. More Klein here. My fave. First link via

History of NYC architecture as seen through a lens

sacre_bleu — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:12:07 -0800

Camera as time machine in NYC In 1939 famed photographer Berenice Abbott published a classic book of New York City images called Changing New York. Some 75 years later photographer Douglas Levere decided to rephotograph the sites, waiting for the weather, season and angle of the sun to match, so that all that differed was the city's evolution. The book presenting the pictures side-by-side was noted here previously. But after it was mentioned on AskMe recently I noticed cool new stuff: 120+ pictures from the book free for the surfing here, and what is apparently its biggest public display to date, at the Museum of the City of New York.

Geoffrey Hiller's Amazing Photos

Masi — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 06:44:36 -0800

Canto do Brasil [Flash, sound, MiguelCardosoFilter] is a street-level view of Brazil made by photographer Geoffrey Hiller, more precisely a view of Salvador Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo.

Another amazing project of his is Burma, Grace Under Pressure [Flash, sound], exposing Burma's beauty and sadness.

Also check Eastern Europe: Visions & Icons [Flash] ,where Hiller's post-Berlin Wall photographs are accompanied by Lev Liberman's moving text, New York City: After The Fall [Flash, sound], an elegy to New Yorkers affected by 9/11, and his journal from Vietnam.

Chinese Pop Posters

plep — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:54:59 -0800

Chinese Pop Posters. More :- Guangzhou's racing track, patrolling despair, Cuba, under New York, Bombay bazaar, and Chinese rural architecture. All from the excellent Atlas magazine - more here.

The Michael The — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 11:14:33 -0800

Aperture at 50. The great photography magazine Aperture, founded by giants Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan, and Minor White, is turning fifty years old. The cool part? To celebrate, they're holding fifty simultaneous exhibitions around New York City (PDF Map here). This is pretty fantastic for any photophile in the Northeast (or with enough cash, time, and desire to come to New York). I personally am going to try to see as many as I can.

madamjujujive — Sun, 29 Sep 2002 06:10:37 -0800

Kodak Girl - Martha Cooper began her love affair with photography when her dad gave her a Kodak Baby Brownie sometime around 1946. A professional photographer, for the last 25 years she's also been an avid collector of photographica. Her focus is on images of women with cameras. Browse through more than a century of historic photos, quirky memorabilia, advertising, toys, comics, movie stills and figurines - it's a fascinating site! In her own photos, Ms. Cooper favors art, anthropology, and urban folk culture. Her colorful work can be viewed at NYCity Snaps.

yarf — Mon, 12 Aug 2002 08:52:03 -0800

Amazing 9/11 Photographs From the late photographer, Bill Biggart. (via Fark)

BT — Wed, 03 Apr 2002 20:53:42 -0800

Things Fall Apart. Particularly in urban environments. Individually, the moments of entropy-in-action caught here may not mean much; collectively, they recite a visual poem about decay. A slightly melancholy site for you insomniacs out there. (By the way, you have to scroll right to get to the thumbnails.)

JackthaStripper — Thu, 13 Sep 2001 00:06:49 -0800

extremely good photographs non graphic, but so excellant in showing many facets of this disaster.

zeoslap — Wed, 12 Sep 2001 14:07:55 -0800

Sattelite Pics of NY, here is a bigger one