Photobooks can have a variety of intentions. They can be inquisitions, investigations, interrogations of difficult circumstances. They can be matter-of-fact documentation, and they can be celebrations of a photographer’s artistic vision. In other words, they can be politics, ethics, history, anthropology, sociology, oftentimes psychology too.

A photobook can gather within its binding a great many images that speak to some larger idea. And it’s not only the individual image that we admire, but the aggregate. Something about them all together teaches us an important lesson.

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“Central Park People” by Harvey Kopel
Published by Absolute Publishing, 2022
Review by W. Scott Olsen

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Perhaps not often enough, the photobook can also be a celebration. Here, the photographer says, is something I love. Not just infatuation: Love. Of the sort devoted to a subject over time, in a variety of moods.

I’m thinking about the photobook as a celebration because I have on my desk today a book that was published a while ago, in 2022, but I only recently discovered: Central Park People: A Photo Essay by Harvey Kopel. And while Kopel calls it a photo essay, the book is better described as a primer. It’s an introduction, but not only for those who’ve never been there. This book is an informed invitation and welcome to a place already well-known.

Central Park People is not street photography of the type we usually imagine, nor is it a tourist brochure aimed at a soft-focus fiction. Central Park People is an act of appreciation and knowledge. The images are vernacular, often in a snapshot style, made by a photographer who has a fine sense of composition and content.

Kopel, who had a long career as a film and video editor and holds a BFA from Ohio University with a major in photography and a minor in art history, was also for many years a tour guide in Central Park, employed by the Central Park Conservancy. Few people on the planet know Central Park better than tour guides, and this book is what happens when a guide is also a talented photographer.

The book is divided into chapters: Escaping the City, Getting Active, Performing and Appreciating, Volunteering and Working, and Relaxing. Each chapter gathers images along those themes, taken in several seasons over several years. There is also an afterward that deals with COVID-19 and its effect on the park. The book concludes with a useful map of where to find the major sites in the park.

But what is really appealing about this book is its comfortable approach to sites in the park, and captions that explain what’s going on. Everything from bird watching to weddings to street musicians to snow sledding is included in this book. The New York City Marathon is here, as well as professional storytellers, urban park rangers, and Master Gardeners. The images, all in full color, depict a park that is multifaceted and dynamic, necessary and loved.

I have had the good fortune to be in Central Park a great many times over the last 50 years, yet, in truth, my knowledge is nothing more than a brief tourist’s pass-through. It would be safe to say I know nothing about Central Park. So this book, for me, was a type of deeper second introduction with context and details. Somebody who has never been to Central Park will find this book entertaining, compelling, and useful. For me, the book has a tinge of nostalgia blended with new insight. Oh, I found myself thinking several times, I’ve been there, but I didn’t know that.

Central Park People contains some text by Alan R. Cohen, a retired psychologist and college professor who was also a tour guide for some time. In a Preface, he writes,

There has long been something unique about photographing people in the park for Harvey. People from all over the world come to share the space with city dwellers from all walks of life for a myriad of similar reasons. That diverse people are able to enjoy the same things, often together, in peace, makes the Park almost a sacred space.

The photographs in Central Park People were made throughout the park, throughout the seasons, and almost always (there are a handful of peopleless landscape shots) capture people in the act of engaging with the park and each other. The images include people enjoying food, someone reading a book, and several people climbing a tree. There are weddings and musicians and rowers and dog walkers, and the list goes on. Detailed captions give context. Taken together, the book celebrates the wide use and appeal of Central Park.

Pick this book up, turn to any page, and what you get is a bit of vibrant life and an informed caption. What you leave with is a rich sense of place and community, even when something like a pandemic hits.

Central Park People is not a large book. It is not disturbing, nor does it contain a call to action. It does not put on airs. This is one of those photo books I pick up for just a moment and don’t put down for a very long time.

A note from FRAMES: Please let us know if you have an upcoming or recently published photography book.