Lou Reed's New York

by Lou Reed (Photographer)

After his first book of photographs was published, Lou Reed told a journalist for The Independent on Sunday that "I live on intuition and taking pictures is intuitive." Here, we see Lou Reed's intuitive take on New York, the city that has been the fulcrum of his creative world for decades and with which he has become indelibly identified. We've heard about the streets and characters for so long through his words and music, and now we can see it through his eyes. Over 100 of Reed's photographs comprise New York , an intimate view of what inspires him.

Genres: Photography

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2006

About the author

Lou Reed was an influential American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. He first came to prominence as the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground (1965-1973). The band gained little mainstream attention during their career, but in hindsight became one of the most influential of their era. As the Velvets’ principal songwriter, Reed wrote about subjects of personal experience that rarely had been examined in rock and roll, including bondage and S&M ("Venus in Furs"), transvestites ("Sister Ray" and "Candy Says"), drug culture ("Heroin" and "I'm Waiting for the Man"), and transsexuals undergoing surgery ("Lady Godiva's Operation"). As a guitarist, he was a pioneer in the use of distortion, high volume feedback, and nonstandard tunings.

Reed began a long and eclectic solo career in 1971. He had a hit the following year with "Walk on the Wild Side", though for more than a decade Reed seemed to willfully evade the mainstream commercial success its chart status offered him. One of rock's most volatile personalities, Reed's work as a solo artist has frustrated critics wishing for a return of The Velvet Underground. The most notable example is 1975's infamous double LP of recorded feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which Reed later commented, "no one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive." By the late 1980s, however, Reed had won wide recognition as an elder statesman of rock.