RICHARD SANDLER
The award-winning photographer/filmmaker, Richard Sandler, shot the streets of New York City from 1977 until the early 2000s, reflecting on the joys and stresses of urbanity.
BIO
Raw, brutal, and uncompromising images. the Eyes of the City is a tribute to the unrecognized ghosts of New York's past.
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Sandler is among the all-time greats of street photography.
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Beauty, Politics and Humor in a rapidly Changing City.
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Meet the Unsung Street Photographer of 1980s New York.
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Artifacts...Unfiltered photos of a bygone era.
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Richard Sandler captured the tenderness of New York City.
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A wild and wandering journey.
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The Hopefuls, Studio 54, 1981
"Because of the density of the spaces depicted in Richard’s frames, tension is rife: for example, children and families are forced into uncomfortable proximity with the pornographic advertisements that were a pillar of pre-Giuliani Times Square in the 1980s. Bystanders become inadvertently complicit in a narrative they are unaware exists. No one is spared exposure in Richard’s street" - Serge J-F. Levy
“You could say, 'look how f----- up New York was in the 80s, look at all this graffiti,' but also it was very beautiful," he says. "The layering of randomness, of one person's tagging over another, and it would go on for months and years, and it started to look like Jackson Pollock.”
PRESS HIGHLIGHTS
2023
The Strange Intimacy of New York City, The Atlantic
Between the streets: shades of New York – in pictures, The Guardian
2017
Beauty, Politics and Humor
in a Rapidly Changing City, The New York Times
Richard Sandler’s Startling Photographs of Pre-9/11 New York, Hyperallergic
2016
These Photos Show a New York That Doesn’t Really Exist Anymore, The Washington Post