LOST: New York by Lynn Saville

I’m delighted to announce the publication of my new book, New York, part of a series titled Lost curated by Kris Graves. Each book in the series focuses on a city and my chosen metropolis is my favorite city of light – New York. 

Reasonably priced at $28, my 6″ x 8″ book includes 28 twilight photographs of this luminous city including a variety of places, from glittering icons like the Chrysler Building to deserted industrial zones. 

Don’t miss this opportunity to own these pictures that, time after time, will invite you to meditate on the city as a stage setting, dreaming its own dreams.

Please note that Kris Graves is keeping this series very limited and very affordable for the artists. There will only be 100 copies of each book available, individual books cost $28, while the full set will cost $250 (limited to 25).

• Category: Photography
• Format: perfect-bound Softcover, 48 pages
• Dimensions: 6″ x 8″
• Publisher: Kris Graves
• First Edition: Limited to 100 copies
• Publication Date: April 2018

Lynn Saville fell in love with New York City as a child when her professor parents, on the way to a sabbatical year in Europe, took her through this grand metropolis. She vowed to return and as a graduate student of photography at Pratt Institute, she discovered that the city came alive for her at twilight. During that transitional time, the streets and buildings seemed to dream their own dreams. Captivated by this vision, Saville has explored the twilight cityscape at both the center and the margins. She reveals the city as a vacant or nearly vacant stage set, but one that hides a secret plenitude.

Saville’s urban photographs have been recognized through awards, exhibitions, and publications. She received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her work has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and abroad. Saville is also the author of three monographs, the two most recent being Night/Shift (Monacelli/Random House), with an introduction by Arthur C. Danto, and Dark City: Urban America at Night (Damiani), with an introduction by Geoff Dyer.

Dark City: Urban America at Night

Photographs by Lynn Saville
Introduction by Geoff Dyer

Color photographs of cityscapes at twilight and dawn that convey the richness of vacancy as a descriptor and a concept. Shuttered stores, blank billboards, untended lots, ghosted figures, and abandoned industrial sites suggest the cycle of change and renewal in which places become spaces and vice versa. 

• Category: Photography
• Format: Hardcover, 128 pages
• Dimensions: 13″ x 9.75″ with 75 color photographs
• Publisher: Damiani, Bologna, Italy
• ISBN: ISBN 978-88-6208-411-6
• Publication Date: Fall 2015

It’s not that the city becomes uninhabited; more that it is inhabited by itself, by premises and windows, walls and doors, all of which seem to exist for their own sakes, not as conduits to or components of social interaction…Occasionally there is evidence of what might be called the archaeology of overnight: resting tools, tired steps, dreaming brooms, sleeping shadows…Stripped of contemporary merchandise and tell-tale signage, empty premises become difficult to date so that they seem sometimes to have dropped not only out of time but of history…The vacancy is both spatial and temporal-and Dark City is full of it.

–Geoff Dyer, from his introduction to Dark City, “The Archaeology of Overnight”

Night Shift

Photographs by Lynn Saville
Introduction by Arthur C. Danto

Color photographs of offbeat New York cityscapes at twilight and dawn. 

• Category: Photography
• Format: Hardcover, 128 pages
• Dimensions: 11″ x 9.5″ with 80 color photographs
• Publisher: Random House/The Monacelli Press
• ISBN: 978-1-58093-219-6 (1-58093-219-3)
• Publication Date: 2009

“Atget recorded Paris in the early morning, before anyone was about. We feel his presence in the surrounding emptiness he has kept for the generations…Saville is his New York counterpart, the Atget of vanishing New York, prowling her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows…”

–Arthur C. Danto, from Introduction to Night/Shift

Acquainted with the Night

Photographs by Lynn Saville — Poetry selected by Philip Fried
Introduction by Joseph Rosa — Foreword by Bill Moyers

• Category: Photography
• Format: Paperback, 160 pages
• Dimensions: 7.9″ x 7.5″ with black & white photographs
• Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
• ISBN: 978-0847819799 (0847819795)
• Publication Date: 1997

The mysterious, seductive essence of the night has long entranced the imagination of artists and writers, and now it is the focus of a unique book that pairs evocative black-and-white photography with classic and contemporary poetry. Lynn Saville’s photographs, shot after dark in and around New York and at other urban and rural sites in the United States, Portugal, Greece, and India, reveal unusual aspects of familiar cities and monuments as well as the dusky allure of fringe areas such as Manhattan’s industrial district and desolate waterfronts. Rich with light and shadow, the photographs suggest the suspenseful, provocative quality of film noir.

Accompanying the photographs are 35 poems and poetic excerpts about the night, beginning with Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” which inspired the book’s title and mood. Selected here are works by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Charles Simic, and Octavio Paz, among other award-winning poets, and citations from ancient verse such as the Rig Veda and The Epic of Gilgamesh. This volume speaks with contemplative beauty to those who love photography and poetry, and especially to all denizens of the night.”