Stanley Greenberg

A unique, quirky view of New York City as a vast collection of urban typologies, Codex New York marks one photographer's revelatory journey through the city. As a lifelong New Yorker and infrastructure aficionado, photographer Stanley Greenberg--author of the bestselling Invisible New York--observes characteristics of the city that most people miss. And the more he passes through it the more he understands New York as a huge index of features that repeat, vary, morph, and multiply--block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. He embarked on a unique journey- walking every block of Manhattan--from the Battery (where there is much more land than when the Dutch first arrived) to Inwood (which retains more of its original topography than any part of the city)--he photographed striking and subtle urban typologies along the way. Alleys, skybridges, parking sheds, mini streets, water infrastructure, relics--these and more were captured to create an incomparable visual chronicle of the city. Codex New York assembles these typologies into an idiosyncratic field guide that prompts new paths of inquiry. What are the objects that a city needs to be a city? When were they built and what do they say about the time they were created? Codex New York also serves as a marker of the time that it was created in; many of the empty spaces Greenberg photographed have already been built upon, demolishing the views of the city that now exist only in images. Joining the ranks of great photographic documentary of the city, Codex New York is a love letter to all of the hard edges and urban quirks of this great town.

Mies van der Rohe once commented, 'Only skyscrapers under construction reveal their bold constructive thoughts, and then the impression made by their soaring skeletal frames is overwhelming'. Never has this statement resonated more than in recent years, when architectural design has undergone a radical transformation, and when digital imaging systems now allow us to construct buildings that would have been impossible just a few years ago. Yet at the same time, the mystery of what lies underneath these manufactured surfaces is now more overwhelming than ever before. In "Architecture under Construction", acclaimed photographer Stanley Greenberg excavates the skeletons of some of our most iconoclastic buildings, spurring on a continued engagement with those intentionally (World Trade Center) and accidentally (Charles DeGaulle Airport Terminal) destroyed that furthers our fascination with what makes buildings stand up, and what makes them fall down. In stunning photographs, Greenberg captures the complex mystery and beauty found in the transitory moments before the outside of a building covers up the structures that hold it together. As designs for new buildings are revealed and architects and engineers challenge each other with provocative new forms and equally audacious ideas, Greenberg documents his own interest in this new architecture. Framed by a historical and critical essay by Joseph Rosa, the Art Institute of Chicago's curatorial chair, and an afterword by the author, the eighty captivating and thought-provoking images collected here - which focus on some of the most high-profile design projects of the past decade, including buildings designed by Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry, and Renzo Piano, among others - are not to be missed by anyone with an eye for the almost invisible foundations that continue to define our relationship with the built world.

This text examines information from surveys of public attitudes to assess people's views about the government's role in reducing income differences between the rich and poor.