Magical Urbanism, a website about urbanization, design and social change, is maintained by Mike Ernst. I'm an urban planner and designer based in New York City. I graduated from the New York Changing photos
This exhibit has closed, but the images are still striking.
New York Changing: Douglas Levere Revisits Berenice Abbott‚Äôs New York presents 50 pairs of photographs by contemporary photographer Douglas Levere and world-renown photographer Berenice Abbott. Abbott‚Äôs iconic photographs, drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, were taken in the 1930s and first published in her landmark book, Changing New York (1939). More than six decades later, Levere used the same camera Abbott had used and returned to the same locations at the same time of day and the same time of year. Indeed, he took on the role of detective as he successfully sought to understand and replicate every aspect of Abbott’s process. When seen side by side, these two remarkable bodies of work reveal much about the city and the nature of urban transformation. Perhaps more than anything else, these carefully crafted images powerfully suggest that in New York, the only constant is change.
