Codex New York

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.