Sara Kramer in A Different Stripe: Notes from New York
Review Books Classics, April 7, 2008.

One of my intentions in undertaking The Manhattan Street Corners project was to catch the island at a single, if necessarily extended, moment in its history, which meant taking the photographs in the shortest time possible for me working alone.

I began photographing in mid-March, 2006, and finished in mid-November of that year. A total of 82 shooting days were required. About a third of the days in this eight month period were either unsuitable, weather-wise, for shooting, or were pre-empted by other obligations. The initial post-production work (downloading, backing up, provisional editing, etc.) following each shoot typically took up another whole day.

Afterwards, in 2007, I caught a handful of corners I found I had missed along the way and also did some necessary reshooting. I still, occasionally, discover another missed corner or decide to reshoot one. These post-2006 photographs amount to perhaps 2% of the total.

I photographed each corner just as I found it, almost always as seen from its diagonally opposite corner. Some of the photographs have no people and no traffic, others are completely dominated by people or even, in some instances, by traffic; the majority are somewhere in between. Most of the photographs simply show what people were doing on the corner when I got there: crossing the street or waiting to cross it, shopping, hanging out, riding a bicycle, and so on — in short, doing what people do at almost any street corner anywhere in Manhattan.

Pitt Street & Rivington Street, Northwest Corner     © 2008 Richard Howe

Except for the 101 Corners Sampler and the Alphabet City & East Village collection, the galleries follow an avenue block by block from south to north, with the — usually four — corners presented in the clockwise sequence: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest (note that these nominal compass points are relative to the long axis of the island which is about 29º off from true north -- "Manhattan North" is in fact very nearly north-northeast). Intersections with fewer than four corners, or with more than four, follow the same clock-wise sequencing.

There are a few gaps here and there in the sequences, sometimes because I was prevented by the police or other security forces from photographing a corner and sometimes because I inadvertently and inexplicably simply failed to take the photograph (perhaps because some of the shooting days were very long). These omissions are being rectified as much as possible as I find them.

More often, the gaps are due to the fact that not every corner that is logically provided for by the Manhattan street grid actually exists, in some cases because of blocks that are two or even three blocks long on one or both sides of the street, in others because of parks or squares that interrupt the basic pattern.

Bennett Avenue turns to meet Broadway, Southeast Corner     © 2008 Richard Howe

I composed the photographs fairly uniformly, but not obsessively so, across the whole set, with eye-level more or less centered vertically and the corners themselves more or less centered horizontally, though the variance in both is large, especially in the placement of the corner horizontally. The field of view varies considerably, ranging from wide-angle to fairly close-up, in accord with my sense of the corner at the time. I settled on the 1 x 3 panoramic aspect ratio in order to concentrate the images on the human, sidewalk level of the streets.

Besides cropping, the images have been processed to correct perspective, to ameliorate lens and camera distortions, and to adjust exposure, white balance, saturation, and other general image parameters. I have not retouched any of the photographs.

Gay Street & Waverly Place, Northwest Corner     © 2008 Richard Howe

The current presentation of the work in the galleries on this website is no more than a stop-gap means to make the photographs available for viewing as quickly as possible. It is my intention to develop The Manhattan Street Corners into a fully searchable image database with a map-based user-interface.

The photographs were intended, however, to be printed, with a target size of 12" x 36" (smaller sizes naturally posing fewer difficulties). I got the technical quality I sought in order to meet this target for perhaps 98% of the street corners (I have reshot or will be reshooting the ones that are sub-par). A surprising number of the photographs can be printed successfully at 24" x 72", and some are still viable for printing at 40" x 120" or even larger (with due allowance for greater viewing distances).

Prints from The Manhattan Street Corners can be made to order now (inquiries to richardhowenyc@mac.com).

Cooper Street & 207th Street, Southwest Corner     © 2008 Richard Howe

The Manhattan Street Corners project was featured on New York Review Books' blog, A Different Stripe, on
April 7, 2008 (click here).

In 2007, four 12" x 36" prints from The Manhattan Street Corners project were acquired by the Library of Congress for its permanent collection through a gift of Nancy Glanville Jewell. The acquisition was featured in the Fall, 2007, issue of the Library's Madison Council Bulletin.

For a more detailed description of the project and its projected final form(s), click here..

Twelfth Avenue, looking South from 135th Street     © 2008 Richard Howe

Thanks to
Peter Alsberg, Joan & Robert Benedetti, John Corigliano, Darragh Park, Bill Hoffman, Alan Kusinitz,
Becket Logan, Carl Morse, Geoffrey Rogers, Moshe Shokeid, Vincent Virga, and Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig,
for their unflagging encouragement and support for the Manhattan Street Corners project.

And a special thanks to Ben Benedetti and Kathy Jungjohann
for their generous assistance in producing this website.

about richard howe

All images copyright © 2008 by Richard Howe