After decades of publishers issuing photo titles about the capital of the world, along comes a fresh take by photographer Laurent Dequick. He had a lightbulb moment to shoot a panoramic view of the city from a boat sailing up (or down) the Hudson and East Rivers. I don't know if it was his idea to present the photos as one continuous strip in this accordion-paged book but it's certainly effective. The glued pages can be turned over one by one to make spreads sixty-four centimetres wide or, if you have the space, open it out fully to 125 feet.
The photos are taken head-on without any perspective of surrounding buildings, the only perspective is the streets disappearing into the distance. Owing to the height of some buildings, there are four lift-up spreads to reveal the complete structure. With a magnifying glass, it's possible to see people along the shore (the book is printed with a 175 screen on a matt art paper).
Gorgeous though the book is, it unfortunately has some editorial flaws, a hundred structures are named and numbered (in the sky at the top of some pages) with interesting captions by Marie Burnel in the last two spreads of the book. For the reader's benefit, I think many more should have been named, though not necessarily with captions. A more serious omission is not naming all the streets, so the reader can see where they are on either side of Manhattan.
Despite the above, I think this is an amazing visual book and for those who live on the edge of the Hudson and East Rivers, an obvious buy for your coffee table.
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