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The Art of Reading presents the first retrospective of Lawrence Schwartzwald´s candid images of readers, made between 2001 and 2017. Partly inspired by André Kertész´s On Reading of 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.

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Born in New York in 1953, Lawrence Schwartzwald studied literature at New York University. He worked as a freelance photographer for the New York Post for nearly two decades and in 1997 New York Magazine dubbed him the Post´s "king of the streets." Books and literature have shaped several of his photo series including "Reading New York" and "Famous Poets," both self-published in 2017. Schwartzwald lives and works in Manhattan.

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