TafGfySkPyXrYuNSUec4309jJIqvWJ2gD1a-AmJ1oFw

Horse Statue, NYC

u-SO1swzSbtBuihUhAnUbuGuXFxduxPTnUPEBnnPXKc

Passenger Ship Overpass

aa4ZkK1FhEjjcoNvWNTtmnAKAlJriSZWosnNCi2HzOE

Checker Taxi NYC

When photographer Jan Staller first arrived in New York City in 1976, he was pulled not to the metropolis’s buzzing epicenters but to its deserted hideaways, those rare areas over which few feet trod and even fewer voices sounded. From his new home in Tribeca, he ventured to the shores of the Hudson River and along the neglected West Side Highway, capturing instants of pensive silence that descended with the setting sun.

Where most photographers flocked to the city’s landmarks, Staller admits that the familiar sites held no fascination for him; instead of documenting Manhattan as it appeared to the objective eye, he yearned to take hold of something far more elusive and stirring at the center of it all, finding his subject in those city elements that had fallen into disuse. In a time when there was widespread anxiety surrounding crime rates in New York, the photographer found sanctuary in isolated locales, discovering solace in the nighttime and in places where no one else dared step after dark.

What kept Staller returning to the West Side Highway was its openness; in a city composed of tightly packed buildings and crowded streets, here he found open vistas that during that day welled with sunlight and at night was spotted with colored pools cast by street lamps. Thirty plus years later, the photographer looks back on the pictures he made, and he can still feel the atmosphere of enigma and discovery that propelled him during his first years in Manhattan. Many of the scenes he captured, he reports, exist no more, having long since been renovated or cleared away to make room for new structures. For those souls willing to travel to the outer thresholds of the city, however, he suggests that they will find the same solitude he once did, and if they’re lucky, the same riddles lurking in the shadows.

Jan Staller’s Frontier New York was published in 1988 by Hudson Hills Press, Inc.

-6TfXcMv6sXjZUj5Jvn66GIHwf7v6eJp-EduD6Upts0

11th Avenue Fire Box

viBzD-WK6I9_AN7fvftG_zeIOOpVoDX-E6EdEKWBsqw

Subway Interior, Rockaway

4BEknrUr1k9FCf3mxKktAppSZazl1z6TN0hMO5eCpzo

West Side Highway Sewer Cover

A4751tEOPQ8S6GOTkN9S1mCBZ2PAiV2BnbNgkao-y5Y

West Side Highway in Snow

dM2BWfCHsfWF4cfUS7t9YUTd2mKARl8iajcL75g0L-0

Subway Station in Snow

ENL32rn0Ts8NMsyCy9JyVm5u7GON90dBDTG-nBphdUo

Parking Berths

mWI70W5gvXmgTliZ2K1atVuRpEUlsje589tJwcj_4Kc

Cone Outside Holland Tunnel

oKN9EJ-T90ra3Va3_2pHJ-CA4d1SmldULOfHLAwQt9E

Traffic Light at Morton Street

q4XRD8u_3dDR7kGAKC7YIb2O_BjkqZVt_wKe77UWrAA

World Trade Center, West Side Highway

qe-WwuaVzqmWfhI0dLAPta8xgmnJQswFmLMpEZW9yZc

West Side Highway Ramp

WpVcQw1PkhfkXG_tiYmLguwUwb_ZlTaJJ46iXjgV_Zo

West Side Highway

All images © Jan Staller

Discover More