Print Ain't Dead in NYC

In a digitally-crazed city that never stops moving, one New York photographer reveals that everyone from pop stars to the homeless still gets lost in print.

Happy World Book Day! In thinking about what to do for this momentous occasion, I stumbled upon this old post of ours — of mostly candid shots of people reading throughout New York City — and was instantly smitten. A photograph of the late Amy Winehouse reading at one of my favorite, now-defunct restaurants, Florent! A woman tucked to the side of an apartment building’s steps in Soho getting a few pages in, as I’ve done countless times. A man reading while pushing a stroller (also guilty), another taking in two books at a time. The story encapsulates so well that feeling of being so engrossed in a book, you’ll read it wherever, however you can, oblivious of the world around you. When I looked up Lawrence Schwartzwald to see what he was up to today, I read that he had sadly died in 2021. So, this post is dedicated to his memory and his wonderful photographs. I’m glad so many people got to spend time with them while he was alive and that folks like me — and maybe you — will continue to discover them anew for years to come.

—Jesse Sposato, executive editor 

Photos by Lawrence Schwartzwald

Back in the early ’70s, probably 1971 or 1972, I picked up a copy of André Kertész's On Reading, which had recently been published. I was impressed by, and a bit envious of, his black-and-white photographs of people in different cities around the world, all in the act of reading.

A bookseller in Union Square, at 17th Street near Broadway.

I was a voracious reader then and I loved to walk — to take “grand obsessional walks,” to quote Henry Miller — across Manhattan. And I was always observing, eavesdropping, stopping at a café or the long counter of a coffee shop now and then to read James Baldwin, Knut Hamsun, Kafka, Jack London and the short stories of Isak Dinesen.

Woody Allen peruses a copy of Helen Vendler's Last Looks, Last Books as he strolls on East 59th after dropping off his wife, Soon-Yi, at Prada.

A woman reads a book on the #3 subway train.

Much later, in the early ’90s — still reading a lot, mostly short stories and prose poems — I began to photograph (as an amateur) poets and writers at reading events around the city: Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov and others. I received some encouragement and picked up a better camera. After a few weeks, my first published photo ran on page one of The New York Times — a “weather photo” during a heat wave on July 10, 1993. A few weeks later the New York Post ran a celebrity photo of mine (Marisa Tomei made up to look pregnant on the film set of The Paper), and for the next 20 years I worked as a freelance photojournalist.

A New York City bus driver reads a book during a break on Greenwich and Warren streets in Tribeca.

A man reads about the preacher Richard Allen with the help of a magnifying glass.

A street book vendor on the Upper West Side gets engrossed in one of his own books for sale.

I continued to read, mostly poets. Now and then I would snap a literary figure or an image of someone, sometimes a celebrity, reading a book, a newspaper or other printed matter. In 2001, my candid image of a book vendor on Columbus Avenue, reading one of his own books and with a scandalous bit of derriere exposed, made a minor sensation. It ran large in the New York Post, and soon after a reporter for the New York Observer wrote a hilarious column, “Wise Cracking on Columbus Avenue,” about the image after interviewing the “portly peddler.”

A woman reads on Mercer Street in Soho.

Since then I have continued to seek out readers — despite (and sometimes because of) the shuttering of bookshops and the rapid growth of the web and impersonal electronic reading devices. I discretely photograph my subjects — mostly solitary and often eccentric, desperate, dignified or vulnerable — engaged in what seems to be a vanishing art: the art of reading.

Actor and comedian Zach Galifianakis reads Corina Copp's Pro Magenta/Be Met in Union Square Park. Zach was in the park to film a Funny Or Die spot.

All of these images are candid, with the exception of Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen and Zach Galifianakis. In each of those impromptu photos, I requested the celebrities to pose with a book.

A shirtless man on the Brighton Beach boardwalk reads two books.

A man reads a book while pushing a stroller on 12th Street near Third Avenue.

The late singer Amy Winehouse at the now-bygone Florent restaurant on Gansevoort Street.

Dustin Hoffman poses with a book of Allen Ginsberg's essays, Spontaneous Mind.

Dylan Spoelstra from Toronto, Ontario, reads Allen Ginsberg's Reality Sandwiches at  Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street protests.

A woman browses books at Strand Book Store.

Two brothers read on the R train.

A man in a wheelchair reads a book while a bodybuilder walks his dog behind him on Amsterdam Avenue.

A woman reads The Lover by Marguerite Duras on East 12th Street.

A woman reading on the #2 train while her daughter slumbers beside her.

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Lawrence Schwartzwald was born in New York in 1953 and studied literature at New York University. He worked as a freelance photographer for the New York Post for nearly two decades, and in 1997 New York magazine dubbed him the Post’s “king of the streets.”

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All photos ©Lawrence Schwartzwald, 2013. No reproduction without express permission. Lawrence Schwartzwald’s images are available for license via Splashnews/Corbis.

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This post was originally published on December 31, 2013.