The Eyes of the City, the first major retrospective of legendary New York street photographer Richard Sandler, will be on view at the Bronx Documentary Center. The opening reception took place on Saturday, 11 February. The exhibition features works from his monograph, The Eyes of the City, along with never-before-seen prints from his vast archive.
With an incisive eye and unrivaled dexterity, Sandler roamed the streets of New York from the late 1970s until September 11, 2001, capturing a changing city with his dramatic juxtapositions of class and race ugly naked in its frame. Sandler is among the all-time greats of street photography; his work has been praised as “at once political, aesthetic and emotionally stirring” by LensCulture, with photographs that take viewers on “a wild and wandering journey,” according to the Washington Post.
In addition to Sandler’s prints, a trilogy of his first-person documentaries will be shown at the exhibition: The Gods of Times Square, Sway, and Brave New York. Sandler’s films capture the essence of Times Square and the East Village in the 1990s, when these essential parts of New York City faced gentrification and real estate speculation, forcing many New Yorkers out of the neighborhoods they once inhabited.