New York Vertical

by Horst Hamann

Now in an easy-to-carry format, this award-winning pictorial tribute to the world's most vertical city offers a unique introduction to New York's spectacular architecture. Using a vintage panoramic camera tilted ninety degrees, Hamann spent nearly five years painstakingly setting up shot after shot, often finding himself balancing precariously out a window ledge, patiently waiting for the perfect lighting conditions. His stark black and white compositions lend these photographs a dramatic, often dreamlike quality, and offer unique reinterpretations of the of the world's most recognizable cityscapes. The result is an original and astonishing array of images-accompanied by quotations from some of the city's most ardent and well-known fans-that capture New York's towering presence in a way no other photographer ever has.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, New York, Art, Reference

190 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is that New York is markedly vertical and thus is interestingly captured when a vertical perspective is adopted. As is customary in photography books there is nothing much written. The preface mentions a few topics that might lead somewhere, such as immigration, but lets them drop, wandering on through vacant, adjective-heavy sentences of praise, questioning nothing and nobody. At the end, Hamann provides technical insight into his process.

But no one is looking at the photographs, as if there is nothing to say about them; they are left to 'speak' for themselves. So, what has happened with the twist? I am ready to admit that I like perspectives that push against the natural shape of the visual field, I enjoy the vertigo they induce and the potential they offer for disruption and interrogation. To force someone out of their way of seeing is to awaken critical consciousness. The problem here is that it tends to go back to sleep. Hamann has sliced the view so as to make it less human, less alive. This might make space to critique or explore the life it offers, to meditate on alienation, verticalised (stacked, perhaps) refashionings of community, but the project here is unquestionably to glorify, and what is implicitly glorified is 'financial potency' and the verticality of power structures.

In the visual field are our sisters and brothers, the stuff of our lives. Beyond it, stretched up out of it, are these towering 'cathedrals of capitalism'. Hamann suggests that they are beautiful and I am obediently able to see the harmony of their lines and forms: but beauty must be questioned as an exclusive standard, something determined and imposed by a hierarchical, carceral culture. Here beauty is propaganda, like socialist kitsch, fascist poetry.

What is forgotten here is that the body is also vertical. The body is the determinant of all meaningful architechtural thought. Hamann has given us a city in the shape of the human body, exhibiting space after space empty of bodies and thoughts of bodies. Inside all these spires are bodies, lives, persons, which Hamann has snapped out of existence. This city is a corpse, disembodied, dehumanised. Its angle foreshadows the diagnosis of Hito Steyerl: Colonisation is now in 3D. Our lives are defined by surveillance and class war is waged from above, from these towers and their cousins now scattered all over the globe.

The photographs are presented on the right hand on each spread, facing a famous NYC quote. The latter range from the pathetic: 'You belong to New York instantly. You belong to it as much in five seconds as in five years' (Tom Wolfe) to the witty: 'When it's three o'clock in New York it's still 1938 in London' (Bette Midler) to the vacuous: 'New York is New York is New York (Wolfgang Joop). My favourite is Simone de Beauvoir's, 'There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless' because this is precisely what I felt.

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Being sold under the euphemistic, “new easy to carry format” this is a too small version of what would probably be a really worthwhile project. If there is one city which cannot shut up about how great it thinks it is to the rest of the world, it is New York and these images feed into all of that.

The images in this version are just too small to make any meaningful impact, these photographs are all about size, scale and drama and because the edition I have is so small all of that is diminished. In the smaller format almost all of the drama, pleasure and impact is lost.

I know I would have got a lot more out of this if I had seen the images in a bigger size, but instead the version I got was postcard size and a bit like watching a grand film on a hand held device or phone instead of in the cinema. So the moral of this story folks is don’t be an idiot like me and if you are going to read this, then go for the larger version.

[Kim Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some spectacular shots in this volume, and others that I didn't find as compelling. Many are vertical shots of the architecture, although not all.

The book is laid out in spreads, with a photo alongside an aphorism from someone with a connection to New York--a writer, a former mayor, a designer. I didn't always understand the connection between the image and the quote (if there was one).

Many stunning images, but overall, a mixed bag for me. It did win the Kodak Photo Book Award, however, so what do I know?

[Virginprune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent photos (almost entirely of Manhattan, in the 1990s), not necessarily improved by the text.
Monochrome, taken with a specialised 1:3 format camera, rotated 90 degrees to capture vertical panoramas instead. The city seems almost deserted.

[Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The photos are simply stunning. This book is an ode to a fabulous city.

[J Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually have a credit in the back of this book. My first ever!

The author is a colleague and I helped him get a quote from Elizabeth Taylor around 1996/96 as he was preparing the book.

Thank you Horst!

[Cams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting imagery of New York spoiled by meaningless quotations.