New York, N. Why? Photographs by Rudolf Burckhardt. Poems by Edwin Denby

Rudy Burckhardt|Edwin Denby

ca. 1939 · Gelatin silver prints · Photographs

This remarkable album is a collaboration between Burckhardt, one of the great New York photographers of the 1930s and 1940s, and his companion and lifelong friend, the poet and dance critic Edwin Denby. The two met in Burckhardt's hometown of Basel, Switzerland in 1934 and moved the following year to New York, where they shared a loft on West 21st Street next door to the painter Willem de Kooning. Included throughout the album are sonnets written by Denby to accompany Burckhardt's photographs of advertising and street furniture, newsstands and barbershops, and the balletic movements of pedestrians on the sidewalks of the city.

Artist

Rudy Burckhardt|Edwin Denby

Date

ca. 1939

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Florance Waterbury Bequest, 1972