Florian Bohm: Wait for Walk

by Ronald Jones, Ulrich Pohlmann

Florian Böhm's recent "Endcommerical/Reading the City," produced in collaboration with Wolfgang Scheppe and Luca Pizzaroni, demonstrated Böhm's infallible eye for the narrative details of city life with a study of what urbanists call "street furniture"--construction barriers, traffic signs and other sidewalk presences. This follow-up, "Wait for Walk, " turns the same cataloging eye to the humans navigating around those urban buoys. Böhm photographs passersby standing before traffic signals: motionless or fidgeting, lost in thought or deep in conversation, staring at nothing or sidetracked by a cell phone, chosen for him and posed for him by chance. Whether New Yorkers or tourists, rich or poor, their shared circumstance, a momentary pause, draws attention to the astonishing wealth of information each projects in posture, expression, clothing and possessions, wearing their identities on their sleeves. Böhm was born in Germany in 1969 and lives in New York.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007