Featuring color photographs by Bruce Davidson, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter and Helen Levitt, New York in Color offers visions of the city as romantic as any in black-and-white.
New York is a city made tame by monochrome. Only in color can one glimpse the extravagance that rules its streets. It wasn’t until color left fashion studios and ad agencies in the late 1950s that artists begin to accept its legitimacy as a means of expression. Beside the very photographers who were opposed to its use, some like William Eggleston became its most fervent champions. “New York in Color” at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, shows today that it is just as possible to visualize poetry in blues, yellows and reds.
Among the more famous images, like Klein’s elegant “Antonia” stepping out of a yellow taxi, or Norman Parkison’s portrait “Young Velvets, Young Princes,” we discover other, lesser known photographers like Nina Berman and the young Amani Willett, whose New York scenes are marked by movement and balanced composition. For Joel Meyerowitz, the city will always be smoky (no matter how many laws it passes), and his New Yorkers are seen enveloped in a cloud of white vapor. Whether saturated or soft, subtle or overwhelming, in the visual arts color is the common denominator, regardless of style or century. These forty-two photos instill in the viewer an odd sense of rest, unexpected for the city that never sleeps.
Jonas Cuénin
New York in Color
Until March 17 at the Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022
(212) 334-0010
