Betsy Karel is a photographer and photojournalist whose new book explores the life of five New York City blocks that she argues encapsulate the life of American society at present. Focusing on Manhattan’s Times Square, a place that has changed markedly since the 1970s sleaze of peep shows and pimps, the project captures the place as it is today, an over the top, tourist attraction teeming with what Karel maintains are the major trends of society today: globalism, consumerism, ubiquitous sexualization, hucksterism, surveillance and narcissism. Published by Steidl, the new monograph entitled America’s Stage: Time Square, lays out a series that compresses the themes into an array of powerful images where “fantasy parades as reality, corporate interests invade almost all public spaces, and Times Square becomes a vivid, almost hyper-realistic, form of theatre.”
The new book Times Square: America’s Stage by Betsy Karel is published by Steidl and is available here.
