Please join us at Sasha Wolf Gallery on Thursday, November 4th, to celebrate the launch of Umbrage Editions’ newest book, Paul McDonough: New York Photographs 1968 – 1978. The book is being released in conjunction with the opening of an exhibition of photographer Paul McDonough’s work, New York Photographs 1973 – 1978, which will display through January 8th, 2011. (These photographs, along with McDonough’s work from a previous exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery, make up the aforementioned monograph.)

Paul McDonough arrived in New York City in 1967 with a 35mm camera and entrée, through childhood friend Tod Papageorge, to the photography workshops and social networks of street photographer Garry Winogrand. Emerging from an early career as a studio easel painter, McDonough found photographing on the streets of New York liberating: “it satisfied my sketching impulses… I learned to carry a camera everywhere, all the time, loaded with 400-speed film.”

In dirty, gritty yet sexy-sweet candid photographs, Paul McDonough: New York Photographs 1968 – 1978 uncovers a high-octane New York, as spontaneous aesthetic and the metropolis collide in the improvisational theater of documentary photography. While the book captures the spontaneous energy of the 60s and 70s, it also showcases the iconic looks associated with New York City during the ebullient 60s and 70s. The book includes 63 black and white photographs and an essay by Susan Kismaric, senior curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as an interview with the artist by Albert Mobilio, a poet and the coeditor of Bookforum.