Luc Kordas: Now Is Now New York
Now Is Now New York presents the restless, electrifying essence of New York through street photography, gathered from the distinctive perspectives of eleven contemporary photographers living and working in the city today. Their images follow the city’s layered realities — from Midtown’s neon corridors to the quieter corners of the outer boroughs — and hold the tension between glamour and grit, chaos and stillness, anonymity and intimacy.
The photographs look at New York’s diverse communities, its iconic architecture and hidden backstreets, its nights of saturated color and its mornings of stark monochrome. Color and black and white sit side by side, as do grand gestures and smaller, more private moments. Together they form a visual portrait of a metropolis in constant motion, a place where a story can open on any corner and every passerby becomes part of the city’s living narrative.
The book is edited by Luc Kordas for teNeues. Kordas is both editor and contributing photographer: he researched and invited the other authors, selected and sequenced the pictures, and made the cover image. The photographers are Luc Kordas, Arnaud Montagard, Mathias Wasik, Sabrina Santiago, Nina Welch-Kling, Elijah Mogoli, Josh Ethan Johnson, Brian Karlsson, Mark Abramson, Sara Messinger and Mike Szpot. The aim is not a survey of the historical canon of New York street photography, but a group portrait of a younger generation’s ways of seeing the city as it is walked now.
New York has been photographed endlessly, and the familiar contrasts of luxury and everyday life are still there. What gives the volume its particular charge is the plurality of eyes. One photographer’s New York is never quite another’s, and the editorial work lets those differences stand, rather than pressing them into a single style. The result is an immediate visual journey through the city: authentic, surprising, and built from stories that are visible only for a brief moment. Aimed at readers of contemporary street photography as much as at anyone drawn to urban life and American city culture, Now Is Now New York offers a multifaceted, living image of the city that never stands still
About the Author
Luc Kordas was born in Wrocław, Poland, in 1984. He lives and works mainly between New York and Europe, moving freely between documentary, portrait, travel and street photography. For street and documentary work he often chooses black and white, which he considers a stronger means of expression. He first photographed New York in 2008, returned in 2012 — when The New York Chronicles began — and settled in the city in 2014. His monograph New York Unseen was published by teNeues in 2023. He is editor and contributing photographer of Now Is Now New York.
