A city portrait: New York City

This is the first in a series of city portraits I will be adding to my travel photography archive. Just as a portrait of a person must attempt to define personality and character, a portrait of a city must do likewise. I chose New York City as my first urban portrait because we go back in time together. I lived and worked in New York more than fifty years ago, and have revisited the city time and time again and watch it continue to change and evolve over the decades. As a young photographer, I first depicted the city on slide film, back at a time when I still made descriptive, rather than interpretive images. In 1959, I tried to show what the city looked like, rather than what it meant to me, or how I felt about it. In the spring of 2009, I returned to New York. This time, I attempted to define the character and personality of the city in interpretive terms – to offer not only a sense of place, but also convey my impressions of how this place feels and functions. I spent a full week shooting in New York, concentrating solely on the Borough of Manhattan. Manhattan is only one of New York City’s five boroughs – but it is the part that’s most familiar to viewers around the world: the business, historical, cultural, and entertainment center of the USA’s largest metropolitan area. My goal here is not to make a comprehensive documentation of this city. Instead, I offer a series of interpretive photographs that express the personality and character of the city as I perceive them. There are sixty-eight photographs in this gallery. I use both black and white and color imagery to tell my story, and sequence and pace the images so they can add context to each other and produce cumulative meaning.

These images were gleaned from the more than 2,000 digital pictures I shot during this trip. I used a ten megapixel Panasonic Lumix G1 camera to make most of these images, equipped with a 90-400mm image stabilized telephoto lens, allowing me to use it in low light situations with remarkable clarity. Its flip-out LCD viewfinder allows easy use at low and high angles, making an amazingly useful tool for travel photography. I also made some images with a Leica D-Lux 4, a pocket camera offering a 24mm wideangle view and a very fast f/2.0 lens. I've edited all of these images with Photoshop to correct and refine the hue, color, contrast and sharpness levels, hopefully making my pictures more vibrant and meaningful. Although all of these photographs were digitally enhanced to some degree, none of the content has been significantly manipulated. The facts are all here, as I captured them. I hope you will enjoy these photographic impressions.

To view my images at their best, just click the "slideshow" button in the top right hand corner. To end the slide show at any time, press your "escape" key. I welcome your comments and questions. Phil Douglis Director, The Douglis Visual Workshops, Phoenix, Arizona, pnd1@cox.net