James & Karla Murray: Store Front NYC
Photographed by James Murray and Karla Murray, this highly celebrated and critically acclaimed collection showcases the distinct history and culture of New York City through its small independent stores, capturing everything from iconic businesses that have vanished to those that continue to endure.
For many years, the photographer couple James and Karla Murray have dedicated themselves to the visual preservation of New York City’s small businesses, many of which are rapidly fading away, alongside a rapidly diminishing genuine cultural backdrop. This book includes beautifully crafted new prints of photographs from their previous publications as well as images that are being shared for the first time, offering a poignant look that is sure to captivate their many followers and anyone fascinated by the allure and history of small-scale urban commerce.
This large, vividly detailed book opens with an introduction by the Murrays, who describe the origins of their lifelong endeavor and their passion for capturing store fronts. The content is thoughtfully arranged by New York City’s five boroughs and includes detailed descriptions and maps. Most store fronts are presented in large single-page spreads, complete with captions that provide the location, neighborhood, and date of each photograph.
These photographs celebrate the diverse and distinctive locales that are gradually disappearing due to escalating rents and shifting demographics. Collectively, they form both a guide and a heartfelt tribute to a city renowned for its ceaseless activity and constant transformation.
About the Author
James and Karla Murray are husband-and-wife architectural and interior photographers and multi-media artists based in New York City. For over twenty-five years they have focused their lens on the streetscape through portraits of storefronts and shop owners and have strived to capture moments of city life that often go undocumented but capture the spirit, energy and cultural diversity of individual neighborhoods. They made it their mission to thoroughly document unique ‘mom-and-pop’ stores when they began to notice the alarming rate at which the shops were disappearing.
Their critically acclaimed books include STORE FRONT NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, New York Nights, Store Front II- A History Preserved and Broken Windows-Graffiti NYC. The authors’ landmark 2008 book, Store Front, was cited in Bookforum’s Dec/Jan 2015 issue as one of the “Exemplary Art Books From The Past Two Decades” and heralded as “One of the periods most successful New York books.” New York Nights was the winner of the prestigious New York Society Library’s 2012 New York City Book Award.
James and Karla Murray’s work has been exhibited widely in major institutions and galleries, including solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society, Clic Gallery in New York City, The Storefront Project Gallery in New York City, and Fotogalerie Im Blauen Haus in Munich, Germany and group shows at the New-York Historical Society, Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, CA and Brooklyn Historical Society. Their photographs are included in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the New York Public Library, and NYU Langone Medical Center. Their photography has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, London Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York Magazine and The New Yorker.
James and Karla were awarded the 2015 Regina Kellerman Award by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) in recognition of their significant contribution to the quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. In 2017-2020, Karla and James were awarded a Creative Engagement Manhattan Arts Grant by the New York State Council on the Arts and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Karla and James received the prestigious Art in the Parks: UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant in 2018 for their public art installation, Mom-and-Pops of the L.E.S.. James and Karla live in the East Village of Manhattan with their rescue dog Hudson.
