Frank Horvat and his vision of New York City

Frank Horvat, Midtown, Midget Lady, NY, USA, 1983, © Frank Horvat.

While between 1965 and 1975, news magazines were in crisis, Frank Horvat, until then renowned for his work as a photojournalist and fashion photographer, embarked on projects of his own, leaving behind the world of commissions. He notably undertook to photograph New York and captured in color all the brute force that characterized the city in the 1980s.

To photograph New York, Frank Horvat chose color, to eliminate any feelinfs of nostalgia, any aestheticism that is too obvious and repeated, but also to embark on a new experience. His lucid and authentic images of New York are born: the city is captured without pretense, with its share of brutality and its visual profusion.

Frank Horvat, Father and child in the subway, NY, USA, 1984, © Frank Horvat.

When photographing "New York Up & Down", Frank Horvat is particularly interested in the strangers he randomly encounters on the streets and subway stations of Manhattan. However, it is less the faces or the particular situations that he seeks to capture than “the accuracy of the composition”: the individuals are an integral part of reality and the scene anchored in its natural environment. Whatever the subjects immortalized by Frank Horvat, his photographs, by their details, have the gift of suggesting the off-screen; they are always open to the city and to life and act as the beginnings of stories that draw the spectator's imagination.