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 André Kertész'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.
