Photo Essay—Jay Maisel

I was recently asked to check out a New York Photographer, Jay Maisel by Richard Akroyd.

“To my mind the big question is whether we develop an underlying set of themes or goals that drive our choice of subject or whether we are “visualisation opportunists” (just invented expression) as Jay Maisel appears to be, picking out and isolating subjects by their artistic merits, without a bias towards specific thematic predispositions”

I was impressed by Jays photographs that were stylish, saturated and stimulating. From what I can gather Jay was using exclusively 35mm film but switched to digital media in the 1990’s.

He shoots almost entirely in New York, as he walks the streets, or from his Manhattan
building. His style is opportunistic, taking pictures as he sees colour or
pattern. From the top of his building he commands an excellent vista of New
York which he captures with a 2000mm lens. In one of his interviews he states
“I would like to teach people how to see things”

Jay Maisel (born January 18, 1931, Brooklyn, New York) is an American photographer. His awards include the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame,  the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Media Photographers,  and the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography. Maisel studied painting and graphic design at Manhattan’s Cooper Union and at Yale University, and became a photographer in 1954.  One of Maisel’s most known images is his photograph of Miles Davis that appeared on the cover of Davis’s album Kind of Blue. Maisel lives with his family in the historic Germania Bank Building in lower Manhattan. Built in 1898, the 35,000- square-foot (3,300 m2) single-family mansion contains 72 rooms over six floors. Maisel purchased the building in 1966 for $102,000 when the neighborhood was in severe decline. The building’s value estimated at $30 to $50 million in 2008. New York Magazine called it “maybe the greatest real-estate coup of all time.”

Source—Wikipaedia

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