Christian Popkes

The black-and-white photographs’ high contrast significantly amplifies their unusual and timeless mood and produces a powerful atmosphere. Structures, forms and Manhattan’s typical rectilinear textures stand out clearly. Extreme focal lengths enable the flat compositional combination of the Manhattan Bridge and the Empire State Building, whose architectural elements feel as if they have been digitally assembled and visually manipulated, even though they are not. Similarly, Popkes’s extreme aerial photographs of the Big Apple’s narrow street canyons reference New York’s urban and photographic history but possess such fine detail and sharpness that they are charged with a truly pulsating contemporaneity.

In this way, Christian Popkes manages to produce a moving portrait of New York that magnificently captures the beauty and distinctive character of this fascinating and unique place while presenting it to our senses in a new way. His pictures tell a tale of strength, resilience and endurance that has always been a part of New York but that we have long not seen in photographs of this kind.

Stephan Reisner