In Dr. Blankman’s New York (Steidl 2018), Tod Papageorge hopes viewers will find a persuasive account of his feelings of freedom while photographing the streets of New York in 1966-67. Twenty-five-years-old and determined to pay the rent through photography work, Papageorge took to the streets with his Leica, creating a carousel-tray of color slides at time when “the Summer of Love and the war in Vietnam were as present as the weather,” recalls the artist.

With his vivid color images of the people and objects he encountered, Papageorge didn’t immediately find commercial success. “I began intuitively making still-life pictures of shop windows and signs, where fruit or Brillo boxes were as likely to turn up as subjects as a political poster pasted over with images of a weeping Vietnamese girl,” he writes in a statement. Despite its lack of financial benefit, Papageorge recognizes the journey the project forced on him –– producing pictures in color for the first time, at a spirited time in American history –– “has resulted so many years later in a new thing, this book.”

Dr. Blankman’s New York
Tod Papageorge
Steidl

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