Description
An evocative portrait of New York City within the 1940s and 1950s by master documentary photographer Todd Webb
I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York makes a speciality of the work of photographer Todd Webb produced in New York City within the 1940s and 1950s. Webb photographed the city day and night, in all seasons and in all weather. Buildings, signage, vehicles, the passing throngs, isolated figures, curious eccentrics, abnormal corners, windows, doorways, alleyways, squares, avenues, storefronts, uptown, and downtown, from the Brooklyn Bridge to Harlem.
The book is a wealthy portrait of the on a regular basis life and architecture of New York. Webb’s work is clear, direct, focused, layered with light and shadow, and captures the soul of these places shaped by the friction and frisson of humanity.
A native of Detroit, Webb studied photography within the 1930s under the guidance of Ansel Adams on the Detroit Camera Club, served as a navy photographer all the way through World War II, and then went on to turn out to be a successful postwar photographer. His work is in many museum collections, including the Museum of Up to date Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Todd Webb’s New York on the Museum of the City of New York, where Webb had his first solo exhibition in 1946, this book helps restore the reputation and legacy of a forgotten American artist.
150 back-and-white illustrations