Chris Crowley Photographs by James and Karla Murray The Off-Kilter Beauty of the City’s Shabby, Singular Storefronts and the photographers who made it their life’s work to document them.
Chris Crowley
Photographs by James and Karla Murray
The Off-Kilter Beauty of the City’s Shabby, Singular Storefronts and the photographers who made it their life’s work to document them.
The common complaint that New York is turning into a city full of identical chains and nondescript glass towers is not wrong, exactly, but it also misses the countless designs that were commissioned by store owners through the decades in hopes of enticing a wandering neighbor to actually stop in: The carnival of colors at places like 188 Bakery Cuchifritos, the old hand-painted signs of bodegas, neon beamed into the night.
James and Karla Murray have made a career out of photographing these places, first getting their start — perhaps not coincidentally — when they were looking for street art in the outer boroughs. They’ve released several books on the subject and today they’ve published their latest, Store Front NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present.
It was all the reason we needed to comb through and pick out some of our own favorites while talking to the Murrays about why they love these Technicolor, mismatched, hand-hewn designs so much.
Chris Crowley
Photographs by
James and Karla Murray
The Off-Kilter Beauty of the City’s Shabby, Singular Storefronts and the photographers who made it their life’s work to document them.