I have always been more interested in the subtle and familiar moments of everyday life, not the big news stories. They are telling in different ways and just as powerful. Nothing was scripted but played out right before me.
– Carrie Boretz
No. 2 IRT Subway, NYC 1980
Carrie Boretzs show us New York City in the late 20th Century. In the photo book STREET: New York City – 70s, 80s, 90s, we’re living in the land of the common people in the city’s vibrant neighbourhoods and communities. Her pictures show us people living life in all its complexities, absurdities and contradictions.
After graduating in 1975 from Washington University in St. Louis Carrie Boretz began her life as a New York City photographer a week later, landing an internship at the Village Voice. Over the next decade she photographed for The New York Times Magazine, New York, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune, and Life. By the 1990s she was shooting almost daily for the New York Times’s “Day” beat, one picture that revealed a slice of the city on that particular day. The streets were her “office” life but after 25 years of shooting, she traded it in to start life in an actual office and became a photo editor at S.I.’s GOLF, (2003–2013) where she was the only one on staff who didn’t play the game. Street is her first book of photographs.
Sisters, West 12th Street and Sixth Avenue, 1978
Beaver and Wall Street, 1994
Women’s Conservancy Luncheon, Conservancy Garden, 1993
Andy Warhol, Studio 54, West 54th street, 1978
Playground, West 43rd street and Ninth Ave., 1993
Homeless teenagers, West 42nd Street, 1985
Orchard Street, 1975
Church and Chambers Street, 1994
No. 7 Subway line, Queens, 1984
50th Street and Lexington Avenue, 1980
Couple on subway, 1978
Dinosaur Playground, Riverside Park and 97th Street, 1993
Fire, Hudson River pier, West Village, 1978
63rd Street and Madison Avenue, 1994