New York’s Washington Square Park has a long cultural – and photographic – history. André Kertész and Diane Arbus both made pictures there, and Edward Hopper lived across the street. Buddy Holly used to perform nearby. The public space has been reinvented many times – from a marsh to a cemetery, parade ground, and, today, a place attended by students from NYU, The New School and Parsons.
It’s now the backdrop for A Walk in the Park?, the first photobook from Amy Horowitz. The volume includes 166 portraits of young adults, shot over five years in Washington Square Park and the West Village. The images range in scale – from full-length to tight shots of the face – featuring singles, couples and groups, always in colour. Many are pursuing creative careers in fields like art, design, fashion, film or music. In one picture, we meet a duo sitting on a bench – one reading Don DeLillo, the other whose book is obscured. To flick through A Walk in the Park? is to discover a melting pot of aesthetics, fashions and styles. It celebrates identity and self-expression. Subjects are adorned with piercings, tattoos, brightly coloured hair and heart-shaped eyeliner. Those depicted meet your eye with a direct and unsmiling gaze, weighted with emotion.
Arbus and Mary Ellen Mark, icons of 20th century documentary, are clear inspirations here. But the series aligns with other landmark projects, too, like Dawoud Bey’s Street Portraits (1988-1991), for which the MacArthur Fellow collaborated with Black Americans of all ages whom he met on the streets of various American cities. There’s also Casey Orr’s Saturday Girl (2013-2020) series, which documented young women, across the UK, on Saturday afternoons in town centres, and Donavon Smallwood’s Languor (2020), made in Central Park. Beyond subject matter, all of these projects are united by one thing: their regard for the connection between subject and photographer as being of paramount importance.
“I’m drawn to the stories behind the surface,” Horowitz says. “This work is about being seen and seeing others – about making time stand still in a moment of mutual understanding.” Printed inside the jacket are short texts by the subjects that “reveal something a stranger wouldn’t know.” This approach recalls Gillian Wearing, who took the pulse of early 1990s Britain by asking strangers in London’s Regents Park “to write down anything they wanted to” and hold up a sign in front of them. Here, Horowitz brings the narrative up-to-date and across the Atlantic. “Today is the first day I’m wearing my natural hair out ever, and the first time, in a long time, I’ve felt beautiful,” writes one. Another says: “I want to be loved so much but intimacy disgusts me.” Elsewhere, “This is my first month in NYC, feel a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I know my life is changing.” These are poignant insights from young people navigating belonging, uncertainty and growth in a fast-moving world. As such, A Walk in the Park? is a key chronicle of our times, guided by a photographer for whom care, respect and genuine connection are essential.
A Walk in the Park? by Amy Horowitz is published by Schilt Publishing & Gallery.
schiltpublishing.com | amyhorowitzphotography.com
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits: © Amy Horowitz / Schilt Publishing & Gallery.
