Customer Reviews

Walking the High Line

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Joel Sternfeld had the right idea when he took photos of Manhattan's High Line in 2000. These are great images of the abandoned railroad and they work so well because you don't really realise that the track is way above street level and now overgrown with all manner of greenery. These photos perhaps give an eerie impression of what Manhattan might look like some months after all the people left.

Apart from the excellent twenty-four photos I found this book very disappointing, there is the usual annoyance of having all the captions on one page at the back of the book. Plenty of room is available to center them under each photo. There are two essays: one by John Stilgoe I found very tedious, Adam Gopnick's was more interesting as it directly concerned the High Line, its history and possible future. Both essays take up twenty-two pages, almost as much as the photo section and this after all is a photo book.

BTW you can see all of the photos on the High Line web site, had I known that I would not have bought the book!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

This is a great book of photographs. Beautifully made and printed, and Joel Sternfeld truly is one of the best art photographers working today. The book is small, with only 24 images, but each one is worth savoring and going back to over and over again. The new version has information about the construction of the park that wasn't in the previous edition. I don't mind that the image titles are at the back of the book (a complaint of an earlier review) because it allows me to simply focus on the the images.

Just steps away from the foodie heaven of Chelsea Market on the tourist trail in Manhattan is the delightful urban pathway along a disused railway line. Even more interesting is the dedicated people who made the line come to life and the sheer determination to raise funds and install bird boxes and urban gardners to tend the footpath in the sky. It is perfect for people with kids or wheelchairs as there are lifts to access the raised areas because it mattered to the people who designed and created it. The book captured the way it was made possible for any community dreamers like me and after you read it you must go and walk it. It is the best.