'New York is an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps’ – Paul Auster, City of Glass, 1985
Few cities have been photographed as much as New York, yet in Harry Gruyaert’s images, it feels entirely new. In this introduction to Harry Gruyaert: New York, acclaimed filmmaker Cédric Klapisch reflects on the city that shaped his own cinematic imagination and on Gruyaert’s remarkable ability to capture its restless energy through colour, light and observation. Moving between cinema, photography and personal memory, Klapisch explores how Gruyaert transforms the seemingly ordinary into vibrant, cinematic images alive with atmosphere and humanity.
© Harry Gruyaert, Maddison Avenue, 1985
I’ve known Harry ever since I was prepping the movie My Piece of the Pie, in 2010. He met with me and Christophe Beaucarne, my director of photography, to tell us how he brought out the colors in the landscapes of northern France, specifically in the area around Dunkirk. Since then, we’ve seen each other regularly. He knows I often take inspiration from photographers and I know he’s often inspired by cinema.
Harry knows my personal connection with New York. For two years, between 1983 and 1985, I studied film at New York University and I later spent a year living in the city, in 2012, when writing and filming Chinese Puzzle. New York was where I learned to make films. I spent a lot of time wandering the streets and asking myself visual questions. How could I film this city? How could I capture its distinctive maritime light? How could I show the way that color is everywhere (unlike in Paris, which is stony and gray)? How could I describe the diversity and delirium of New York faces? It must be one of the most filmed and photographed cities in the world. When I was a student, several directors dominated my perception of this metropolis: Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch. Each of them showed his own view of the city, sometimes mingled with photographic influences. I remember one masterclass in which Jim Jarmusch talked about his kinship with the images of Robert Frank.
© Harry Gruyaert, Manhattan, 1972
When Harry takes pictures on the streets of New York, this is exactly what he’s trying to capture. A cosmopolitan and multicultural population that welcomes strangers without treating them as “other.” – Cédric Klapisch
It took me some time to figure out what it was about the city that fascinated me so much. There’s a particular kind of light there. The sunlight is sharp and the shadows of the skyscrapers sometimes plunge the streets into a deep penumbra. Tourist guides lead you to believe that it’s a gridlike city, neat and orderly and guided by urban logic. They claim that it’s divided into three sections: downtown, midtown, and uptown. But when you live there, you soon learn that it’s much more subtle and complex than that. Living in New York means experiencing chaos and diversity. It’s the very definition of “cosmopolitan.” The word comes from the Greek cosmos, meaning “world” or “universe,” and politês, which means “citizen” or “of a city.” When Harry takes pictures on the streets of New York, this is exactly what he’s trying to capture. A cosmopolitan and multicultural population that welcomes strangers without treating them as “other.” Harry creates a portrait of the city that focuses on otherness.
© Harry Gruyaert, Manhattan, 1985
You can’t talk about Harry without mentioning his relationship with color. His images follow in the footsteps of great colorists like Stephen Shore, Helen Levitt, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter, Joel Meyerowitz, William Eggleston, and Alex Webb: photographers who are very conscious of the key role that color plays in the structure of an image.
You can’t talk about Harry without mentioning his relationship with color. – Cédric Klapisch
When you’re in New York and you look at a street at random, most of the time you think that there’s nothing to see, or at least nothing very interesting: a mass of cars, passersby, buildings, and things happening with no particular significance. Nothing that seems conducive to a good photograph: there’s no logic in this spectacle, nothing that looks suitable for framing or artistic appreciation. Nevertheless, this is what Harry Gruyaert goes out to photograph. He systematically captures what Georges Perec called “the infra-ordinary”: in other words, the opposite of the extraordinary. Perec was more interested in “the train that stays on the rails,” not the kind that Hollywood movies focus on, but the kind we all take every day. Flicking through the pages of this book gives you the same feeling you'd get walking down a New York street. You’re not following a thread of logic but you can feel an effervescence, a commotion, a frenetic fusion of people, signs, street furniture, advertising, and cars. The world capital of social contrast and unparalleled ethnic diversity, New York is a combination of rich and poor, communities and skin tones from around the world. The city is a magnificent, many-colored melee.
Nothing that seems conducive to a good photograph: there’s no logic in this spectacle, nothing that looks suitable for framing or artistic appreciation. Nevertheless, this is what Harry Gruyaert goes out to photograph. He systematically captures what Georges Perec called “the infra-ordinary”: in other words, the opposite of the extraordinary. – Cédric Klapisch
© Harry Gruyaert, Manhattan, 1985
Looking at Harry’s images raises a simple but fundamental question: what makes a photograph? While millions of people take millions of photos in the street and the vast majority of these images are simply banal, Harry notices the banality but when he captures it with his camera, it turns into something else. When I look at his photos, I immediately see life. I often find myself wondering who these people are that I’m looking at; they turn into characters in a potential movie. And that's what I’ve enjoyed doing throughout this book.
Looking at Harry’s images raises a simple but fundamental question: what makes a photograph? While millions of people take millions of photos in the street and the vast majority of these images are simply banal, Harry notices the banality but when he captures it with his camera, it turns into something else. – Cédric Klapisch
I know that Harry’s much too modest to consider himself an artist, but what else could this act be called? To me, the purpose of photography — and perhaps a definition of art itself — is to make the banal beautiful. Harry elevates the real by never seeing it as elevated. Reality is reality, it’s the everyday, it’s insignificant, it’s often messy, and sometimes pretty ugly. So how do you go about finding beauty where you wouldn’t expect it? The answer lies in Harry’s eyes and in his work. By celebrating the man on the street, the “man of no importance,” all the people walking through the city, shopping and running errands, waiting for a bus, a subway train, or a friend, heading for who-knows-where, Harry Gruyaert methodically builds up, step by step and place by place, a multicolored map of humanity.
Harry elevates the real by never seeing it as elevated. Reality is reality, it’s the everyday, it’s insignificant, it’s often messy, and sometimes pretty ugly. – Cédric Klapisch
Harry Gruyaert: New York is available now.
Words by Cédric Klapisch.
