shashasha

This 2024 edition brings together two series of photographs by Keizo Kitajima made in New York: the first in black and white, taken in 1981 and 1982 (previously published in Kitajima's 1982 book "New York"), and the second in color, taken in 1986, 1987, and 1989.
The book begins with Kitajima's series from the early 1980s. Arriving in New York for the first time, Kitajima rented an apartment in the East Village and devoted himself entirely to photography: he left his apartment at 10 a.m., photographed until evening, took a break, then returned to the streets to shoot more. On rainy days, he worked in his darkroom at home. In these black-and-white images, Kitajima captures New York at the possible peak of its cultural significance: gritty, impoverished, and dangerous, yet intensely diverse, multicultural, expressive, and creative.

Throughout the series, he focuses on what truly defines New York - not its architecture, but its people. Several years later, in the color series, New York appears differently in Kitajima's photographs. Though still diverse, the city is now more affluent, but also tamer and more serious; smiles are rare. In his afterword, Kitajima notes, “In just a few years, the streets of New York, including the places where I lived, were completely transformed. It was changing into an arena where people staked their lives on the competition for economic gain.”

“A photographer must be a non-permanent resident, adrift, already and always having left their country, never to reach a place to settle anywhere in the world, but the history and the present of the country they have left are deeply engraved in them. Wherever they go in the world, they carry a latent migrancy with them, and it is only when they enter in among the members of a ‘village’ in some corner of the Earth that their own work begins …
Keizo Kitajima’s New York, the brilliant chain of these images themselves, draw us toward contemplating the mysterious mode of existence known as the photographer.”
― from Shino Kuraishi’s essay “Posture During a Time of Transition: On Keizo Kitajima’s New York in the 1980s”