New York Sleeps Foreword by Petra Giloy-Hirtz and Ira Stehmann This is New York! Or are they dream worlds, chimeras, inventions, or perhaps testimony to a past era? Viewers are astonished, recognizing the places and getting lost in memories. A city of silence, beyond the turbulence of everyday life, a metropolis with no people, as if a spell had been cast on it: Grand Central Station, Fifth Avenue, the Flatiron Building, Katz's Restaurant, the Brooklyn Bridge-familiar, but never seen this way before. When we unsuspectingly removed these photographs from a drawer-seven views, all taken in 2001 (before September 11), softly sketched as a result of long exposure times, printed on deckle-edge paper with the streaky border of a Polaroid-we urged the photographer to return to New York, where he had lived now and again over an extended period, in order to continue the series. Over two more years, including stays in each of the seasons, he produced a portfolio of photographs, of which the present volume presents a selection of nearly eighty works. With his clear idea of shooting techniques, composition, light, formats, and his dispensing with color, the exquisite printing in rich, subtle tonality, and the form of the images' presentation-handmade paper, passe-partout, frame-Christopher Thomas picks up on classical traditions. As a renowned photographer of a glamorous world of products, he has access to all advanced technological possibilities, and as an artist he is familiar with the power of the image. His photographs seem classical, from another time. Before dawn, when the city is asleep, Thomas sets out in the twilight with his large-format camera-a field camera built for him by Linhof-which forces him to move slowly, as well as a tripod, a black cloth, and black-and-white Polaroid film. It is as if he were taking himself outside of time. As if, at this moment when night borders day, he could uncover the essence of the city, erasing the profane and quotidian in favor of the "eternal" or timeless. He approaches his "motif" with a documentary intention and at the same time establishes the aesthetic of the romantic and painterly. He concentrates on the real, focuses attention on the object, and yet a hint of "another" world becomes tangible. Like idealized landscapes in the romantic tradition, his photographs have a poetic sensuality, contemplative power, and an emotional aura; they evoke sensations such as admiration, delight, aesthetic pleasure: the parks and piers, the Hudson River and Coney Island, the cemeteries and bridges, the Statue of Liberty, in the early morning fog, beneath autumn leaves, schemas in the mists, pristine blankets of snow, silvery skies, gleaming surfaces of water, squares, and monuments-all without any traces of flaneurs or residents. Hidden away in the beauty that derives from silence are the melancholy and fear of loss. The perfect always bears its own inherent risk, and the stasis of time includes change. What may nostalgically seduce our eyes as a "souvenir," a memory, also evokes as an alternative vision the racing speed, the inhumane, and the wounds of the city. We are very pleased that two outstanding connoisseurs of classical and contemporary photography have written essays for this publication: Ulrich Pohlmann, who has been director of the Fotomuseum München for many years, where Christopher Thomas's cycle Münchner Elegien (Munich elegies) was shown in 2005, and Bob Shamis, himself a photographer as well as curator for photography, for many years at the Museum of the City of New York. Bob Shamis offers "an impressionistic discussion" of Christopher Thomas's work, and, having looked at thousands of photographs of New York, he appreciates their uniqueness. Pohlmann outlines Thomas's "European view," his romantic (re)construction of a city," and his "homage to the beauty of a city's architecture" in the context of historical connections. From Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alvin Langdon Coburn-all members of the Photo Secession, founded in New York in 1902-to contemporaries such as Helen Levitt, Inge Morath, William Klein, and Robert Frank, he has written a brief history of the photography of New York, which has also turned into a history of the city, its architecture, and the mentality of artists, opening our eyes for New York Sleeps. It is fortunate that the publication of the book coincides with the public presentation of the photographs themselves: in New York, they are being shown by Steven Kasher in his new gallery spaces in Chelsea, and Blanca Bernheimer, Bernheimer Fine Art Photography, is showing them in Munich in the Palais at Brienner Strasse 7. We are sincerely grateful to Prestel Publishing, which has produced a spectacular book, especially to Gabriele Ebbecke, Cilly Klotz, and Christine Gross for the project management, graphic design, and production management, respectively. We are also profound grateful to Christopher Thomas for taking us on this adventure!

Bernheimer Fine Art Photography zeigt im September 2009 eine Ausstellung der neuen Serie New York Sleeps von Christopher Thomas. Die Arbeiten dieser Serie zeigen uns wunderbar stille Aufnahmen - auf Büttenpapier geprinted und in Rahmen schwebend montiert - der uns bekannten rasanten Metropole. Christopher Thomas präsentiert New York als eine Stadt der Stille, jenseits der Turbulenzen des Alltags, eine verzauberte Metropole ohne Menschen: Grand Central Station, Fifth Avenue, Flatiron Building, Katz's Restaurant, Brooklyn Bridge..., vertraut, aber so nie wahrgenommen. Nach ersten Aufnahmen im Jahr 2001 (vor dem 11. September) ist in den letzten beiden Jahren während New York Aufenthalten zu allen Jahreszeiten ein beeindruckendes Konvolut von Photographien entstanden, aus dem eine Auswahl von 80 Arbeiten im Herbst 2009 im Prestel Verlag veröffentlicht wird. Die Texte in dem von Petra Giloy-Hirtz und Ira Stehmann herausgegebenen Photoband haben Ulrich Pohlmann, seit vielen Jahren Leiter des Fotomuseums München, der 2005 den Zyklus Münchner Elegien von Christopher Thomas in seinem Haus vorstellte, und Bob Shamis, selbst Photograph und Kurator für Photographie am Museum of the City of New York, verfasst. Bernheimer Fine Art Photography zeigt zeitgleich mit dem Erscheinen der Publikation zum ersten Mal die Photographien der Serie New York Sleeps.