One of the great benefits of a photographic series is the ability to achieve both breadth and depth. With many examples of a similar subject or subjects, we can appreciate variations on a theme. And with each variation, the theme becomes more clear, more complex, more nuanced and present.

In other words, this kind of sampling leads to deeper understanding.

It’s a bit like seeing 18 different paintings of the Madonna and Child. Each one is a furthering and a deepening of the idea.

---

“The Many Pleasures: Found Art in New York City”, by Barton Lewis
Published by Daylight Books, 2024
review by W. Scott Olsen

---

The Many Pleasures, the new book by Brooklyn-based filmmaker and photographer Barton Lewis, is a collection of images of found art in New York City with a very specific theme upon which to celebrate the variations, and an extraordinary book because of the way it achieves this special combination of breadth and depth.

According to the book’s press materials, “Lewis’s subjects are graffiti, torn advertising posters, stickers, paint, the textures of decay, the contributions of anonymous artists, rips, rain, and sun all combining in color, shape, and meaning. Abstraction and layers expand content and invite metaphor and interpretation from the viewer, and in this way, Lewis is highlighting the collaborative creativity present in everyday life and interactions.”

The Many Pleasures contains an engaging introduction by New York City public historian Kathleen Hulser, who is curator at the New York Transit Museum. At times erudite and always insightful, in the introduction, we learn, “Lewis makes us aware of the layered rhetoric of advertising, how weaponized language and icons are deployed to persuade and open wallets. Advertising originated as a layered language of culture symbols. But the symbolic language of ads operates in public space, where commercial aims may be bent to other, more free-spirited expressions. Both natural deterioration and the deliberate slicing of ads underline the metaphoric energy of these palimpsests.”

More than a street photography approach with context and environment and milieu, The Many Pleasures takes a more documentary, almost anthropological approach. This might sound off-putting, but the result is deeply satisfying. The book has the visual appeal of a presentation on a gallery wall.

Of course, aging and wear and patina and dissolution have always been photographic darlings. The reason for this, I believe, is the intuition of multiple narrative lines. We have the story of youth, the story of now, and the story of the sometimes very long time in-between.

Sometimes, the deteriorations are simply aging, the wonderfully attractive weathering of sun and storm, yet more often, and intriguingly, the changes are imposed by street artists disassembling and reassembling what they find.

While the book does not have an internal narrative arc, it is, nonetheless, completely compelling because every example seems to give evidence to multiple histories. This is a book rich in color and, occasionally, with its fold-outs, impressive in its own physical size. Looking at every image, a viewer’s first act is to try and unfold the origin, to try and discover what ad or idea was first expressed in print, pasted on a wall or support. But immediately after that, the great joy of this book is uncovering its altercation to a present state.

Occasionally, as with his images of subway station pillars, Lewis assembles items into a type of panorama, a multi-tych we’re meant to consider as a group. We are meant to consider the set as individuals as well as all as one. The visual back and forth, and the comparisons of details are entertaining and insightful.

The book is divided into two sections. The first is called On the Street (pillars, posters, mailboxes), and the second is called Wall Cuts (signs hung on walls). This organization allows for a nice sense of unity to combat the ever-dangerous feeling of randomness possible with an anthology like this. And there is an informative index at the end for anybody that wants to go find this art and whatever state it may exist in today.

The best way to describe The Many Pleasures is as portraits of art. The images, all of them excellent, are acts of documentation and preservation that allow for deep wondering and enjoyment.

As Kathleen Hulser later writes, “Lewis’s photographic journey through New Yorkers rip, tear, and mark rebellion affirms the anarchic energy of urban street art. From witty excavation To gob-smacking overwriting, The Many Pleasures invites us to engage with urban poetics and decode the city’s soul. Playing peekaboo with the every day, these tattered remnants scratch through to the other side of reality, where the unseen and the imagined are more desirable than the legible.”

The Many Pleasures is one of those dangerous photo books that you open and then can’t put down. You find yourself staring at mailbox after mailbox, at pillar after pillar, thoroughly enjoying the unpacking of the image. Not so much an unpacking of composition and light as an unpacking of the metaphoric value and impact of street art.

This is one of those books you leave out on a table, and when guests come over, suddenly, the conversation hits a rough spot. They look up and apologize. Sorry, they say, holding the book. This is really cool.

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