Book Review: The Edge of the City

Yet another look at the city

Though published in 1998 I thought it was very typical of many New York photo books published in the last decade or so. Art book publishers seem intent on finding photo collections of the city to include in their lists. As well as this book by Pratt I'm aware of similar books from Vivian Cherry, Homer Page, Rudy Burckhardt, Arthur Leipzig, Paul McDonough and the forth coming one on Vivian Maier. I have books by some of these photographers and they all have one thing in common: a huge variation in the quality of the photos.

This is the case with these images from Charles Pratt. Of the eighty-two duotones (printed with a 175 screen) a few are really stand-out shots mixed in with a mediocre remainder. In fact the variation in these pages is more than any other photo book I've seen. There are photos here that are definitely not worth a second look. This makes it somewhat frustrating to turn the pages and come across a photo that works on all levels but over the page is another that made me wonder why it was even included.

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The publisher went to trouble of having a two color cover.

Title spread. Sort of boring without a photo or two.

A spread from the fourteen page intro.

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