Harvey Wang's New York

by Harvey Wang, Harvey Wang

Where else but New York? Where would you still find a 97-year-old scrap-metal collector, a pillow maker, a mannequin maker, or someone who still digs graves with a shovel? In New York―but not for long. These beautiful and often poignant portraits show us men and women in vanishing jobs and professions. As machines and electronics take over, as gentrification or changes in customs occur, a way of life disappears. But Harvey Wang was able to document these lives before it was too late. The photographs and descriptions will entertain and inform us all.

Genres: Photography

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 1990

Reviews

[Tom Link]

A beautiful but sad book about the disappearance of small businesses in NYC in the late ‘80’s.

[Nancy]

Either I'm not the audience for this or the framing didn't age well (or both). No, I do love the photographs. Very much: how the people look right at us, how they are not meant to be candid, though they carry so much vivacity. What I tired of was the theme: "oh dear oh dear I'm the last one left of my kind!" I wonder if in 20 years those of us grumbling about AI will come off like this? Because I'm like, hey pillow-making guy, whatever. Your job's going away because there's a WAY easier way to make a pillow!

Okay okay I am very glad there is a guy who paints signs. But I'm not sorry about the seltzer bottler, nor the typesetter. Not really. And I notice the really happy guys are the people who aren't trying to keep a dream alive, but just riding the tide: the scrap collector, the gospel singer...

[Elyse Hayes]

A fascinating, heartbreaking elegiac documentation of what are now vanished professions and local businesses in New York City. Published in 1990, Wang photographed people before it was too late. Even more poignant to read it now, knowing that all these workers - and their jobs - and their neighborhoods, are now gone. Disturbing to think about how greedy landlords, gentrification and technology have erased much of New York. From the back cover: "Where else but New York . . . would you still find a 97-year old scrap-metal collector, a pillow maker, a mannequin maker, or someone who still digs graves with a shovel? But not for long."

[Robby Johnson]

This might even be a worthy addendum to Studs Terkel's Working". Fascinating time capsule of a period when certain jobs were disappearing. These short biographies and fascinating portraits were all taken in 1990, four years before I moved to New York. Many of these characters were long gone by the time I arrived. They're almost surely all gone by now.

[Karl K]

My favorite book. Of all time. Small, simple, beautiful. Perfect.