I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here—a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.
In 1979, responding to complaints from riders that the subway map was difficult to use, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hired the Manhattan design firm Michael Hertz and Associates to create a new map. The M.T.A. subway map is a record of how graphic design, politics and geography have shaped the city over the last 40 years.
Leo Goldstein began capturing East Harlem in 1949 after he’d joined the New York Photo League, a photo club that originated around the beginning of the Great Depression. Having remained largely unseen for the last 70 years, his photographs are now the focus of a new book, East Harlem: The Postwar Years.
Nearly 80 years ago, a construction standstill derailed the subway’s progress, leading to its present crisis. This is the story, decade by decade.
The “Poet of Radical Photography”, Miron Zownir, captures the provocative energy and aggressive hedonism of New York City in the 80s.