Janet Delaney: «Early Morning, Staten Island Ferry» aus Red Eye to New York (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. (Bild: Janet Delaney)
In the picture
The photographer Janet Delaney, who actually lives in San Francisco, repeatedly accompanied DHL cargo planes to New York in the 1980s. Between the return flight, she conquered the city.
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The American photographer Janet Delaney (born 1952) worked in a photo lab in San Francisco in the 1980s. A friend and former college colleague named Rudy called her at irregular intervals and asked if she would like to take on a last-minute night courier flight to New York. She always agreed and, often exhausted after the five and a half hour night flight, roamed through New York at the time. Sometimes the stays lasted only a day, sometimes a whole week.
At this time, the city was the place of the places: projection surface for realizable dreams. New York, so the perception of many still today, was then vibrant, unrestrained, promising, open, novel, monstrous and full of possibilities. Rougher and wilder than Delaney’s then home town of San Francisco and the opposite of her everyday life at the time.
–Janet Delaney: «Sunbather on the East River» aus Red Eye to New York (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. (Bild: Janet Delaney)
Open eye for the human
In this mood, Delaney strolled through China Town, along Canal Street to Soho and beyond 14th Street during her stays. She obviously had an interest in the people of this city. The workers, those who relax or the groups.
–Janet Delaney: «Students in Uniforms» aus Red Eye to New York (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. (Bild: Janet Delaney)
Delaney took photos with a Rolleiflex camera. With it she appropriated the city, overcoming tiredness and disorientation because, as she describes it herself, she became attentive and present again in the moments of pulling the trigger.
Her pictures are reminiscent of the feeling of having to conquer a city, just by strolling through the streets, looking at everything and everyone. Delaney’s gaze opens up perspectives that reveal the rhythm of this city – the moments of calm, loneliness, the merging of residents and surroundings and the stubborn characters of this city.
–Janet Delaney: «Woman with Tree» aus Red Eye to New York (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. (Bild: Janet Delaney)
Ideas of a city
The publication by the English publisher Mack Books is a journey into the past and, at the same time, into the present. Because Delaney’s work shows in a very intuitive way what shapes our ideas about this city. It is the residents in particular who move through the city with an extraordinary self-image and their own dynamic.
–Janet Delaney: «Coffee and a Sandwich on Union Square» aus Red Eye to New York (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK. (Bild: Janet Delaney)
The existing projections and perceptions are then promptly confirmed. Even if they only come from visits or from film impressions. “Typically New York”, you think and you know that you need pictures like Delaney’s here to assure yourself of your ideas, but also to open yourself to the real.
Book tip
Janet Delaney «Red Eye to New York»
The publication with linen-bound hardcover with tip-in picture was published in October 2021 and is available here for 45 euros. “RED EYE TO NEW YORK” is by no means just something for fans of New York, because the publication exposes the microfiber structure of a city in a calm and almost contemplative manner.
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