Tenth Anniversary

March 2017 -

This month marks the tenth anniversary of an ongoing series of photo essays which started at this website in March 2007. Published every two weeks for the past decade, these essays capture a period of remarkable change along New York City's waterfront, as many of the industrial relics of the past century were removed to make way for new residences and parks at the water's edge, even as sea level rise, climate change, storms, and economic forces radically reshaped the city.

These photo essays started as a personal project to document the rapid transformation of Brooklyn's coastline, and have since expanded to capture change in all five boroughs, and in other coastal cities. Initially intended to show unseen aspects of the contemporary landscape, they have since taken on a historic value, with hundreds of thousands of photos cataloging lost landmarks and disappearing neighborhoods. These essays have been exhibited in museums and libraries, have been published in all of New York City's major periodicals, and several of these photos are in the permanent archives of the Museum of the City of New York, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Library.

These essays are currently published as the Camera Obscura column at Curbed NY.  The first five years of essays are archived at this website, while the most recent five years can be seen at Curbed. A complete list of all 212 photo essays has been amassed here. As the evolution of the city continues, this archive of photo essays will continue to grow.