The Art of Reading presents New York photographer Lawrence Schwartzwald's (born 1953) candid images of readers, made between 2001 and 2017. Partly inspired by Andr� Kert�sz's On Reading (1971), Schwartzwald's subjects are mostly average New Yorkers--sunbathers, a bus driver, shoeshine men, subway passengers, denizens of bookshops and cafes--but also artists (most notably Amy Winehouse at Manhattan's now-closed all-night diner Florent).
In 2001 Schwartzwald's affectionate photo of a New York bookseller reading at his makeshift sidewalk stand on Columbus Avenue (and inadvertently exposing his generous buttock cleavage) caused a minor sensation: first published in the New York Post, it inspired a reporter for the New York Observer to interview the "portly peddler" in a humorous column titled "Wisecracking on Columbus Avenue" of 2001. Since then Schwartzwald has sought out his readers of books on paper--mostly solitary and often incongruous, desperate or vulnerable--who fly in the face of the closure of traditional bookshops and the surge in e-books, dedicating themselves to what Schwartzwald sees as a vanishing art: the art of reading.