New York Waterfront Diary

The album New York Waterfront Diary by Franco-American photographer Sophie Fenwick presents an original and powerfully evocative portrait of a New York waterfront in the throes of change. The two hundred or so photographs, in a wide variety of formats – silver gelatin prints, super-8 film stills, digital snapshots – are drawn from several decades of the artist’s archives.

The photographs simultaneously show us abandoned places, doomed to inevitable decay, and others, such as Coney Island or Red Hook in Brooklyn, whose vitality seems unalterable. They also reflect a personal, interior journey, thanks to the counterpoint provided by the poems Sophie Fenwick wrote in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The book, with its impressive scrapbook-style layout by Lev Zeitlin of Red Square Design, also includes an illuminating interview between the artist and essayist and photography historian Pauline Vermare. By documenting what is an essential part of life in the megalopolis, New York Waterfront Diary summons both memory and imagination, and invites us to meditate on time and distance.