Ken Schles: Invisible City

(Hardback)

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For a decade, Ken Schles watched the passing of time from his Lower East Side neighborhood. His camera fixed the instances of his observations, and these moments became the foundation of his "invisible city." Friends and architecture come under the scrutiny of his lens and, when sorted and viewed in the pages of this book, a remarkable achievement of personal vision emerges. Twenty-five years later, Invisible City still has the ability to transfix the viewer. A penetrating and intimate portrayal of a world few had entrance to - or means of egress from - Invisible City stands alongside Brassai's Paris de Nuit and van der Elsken's Love On The Left Bank as one of the twentieth century's great depictions of nocturnal bohemian experience. Documenting his life in New York City's East Village during its heyday in the tumultuous 1980s, Schles captured its look and attitude in delirious and dark honesty. Long out of print, this "missing link" in the history of the photo book is now once again made available. Using scans from the original negatives and Steidl's quadratone technique to bring out nuance and detail never seen before, this new edition transcends the original of this underground cult classic.

Reviews

"I was looking at this idea of what does the image mean, not only photographic images but also images we hold within ourselves about he world we have around us," he said. "I felt my world was falling apart. I started thinking what I consider my world is and it's really a series of images: as a father, as an American, as a New Yorker, these things they're all images."

Those thoughts were also present when Schles was initially working on Invisible City, looking for a way to document his experience in New York that differed from those of both his father, a New York native, and also countless other artists who had created work that reflected their own experiences living there.--David Rosenberg "Slate"