Richard Sandler's 'The Eyes of the City' Captures New York and Boston from 1977 to 9/11

Photographer Richard Sandler presented his book 'The Eyes of the City' at PowerHouse Books in Dumbo, New York, to a packed audience of friends, admirers, and colleagues. The volume compiles images taken in New York and Boston from 1977, when he was gifted a Leica, until shortly before September 11, 2001. Sandler described reviewing 34 years of work as challenging, noting that the street is a common thread, along with social disparity and the second-class citizenship of Black Americans. The photographs feature familiar New York scenes: Grand Central, Macy's, customers outside a jewelry store, graffiti-covered subways, sidewalks, and especially street corners—which Sandler favors as the meeting of two flows, like rivers joining. In the afterword, Jonathan Ames writes that Sandler taught him to open his eyes and see the energy of life, its beauty and terrifying ugliness, describing the photos as both a horror film and a love letter to the world.