Art historian and Hostos Community College Professor Thomas Beachdel, Ph.D., in collaboration with artist Marie Tomanova, is gearing up for the launch of their new book, “New York New York” (Hatje Cantz, 2021), which documents the mythic pull of New York City and youthful independence and identity. It expands on their highly acclaimed first book together, “Young American” (Paradigm Publishing, 2019), which was about an ideal of America from the standpoint of a recent immigrant that was, as photographer Ryan McGinley states in his introduction, “a future free of gender binaries and stale old definitions of beauty, diverse & inclusive.”
Beachdel, who teaches in the College’s Humanities Department, and has recently established a Global Humanities Unit, writes: “Tomanova left her family farm in the small border town of Mikulov in the Czech Republic and came to the United States in 2011 and to New York in 2012, alone, knowing no one. And her world expands. It is a story of dreaming, risking, surviving, and finding one’s own way, and it likely mirrors the aspirations and the emotional landscape of the individuals Tomanova has photographed for ‘New York New York.’” Beachdel continues, “It is often easy to look back and not see the struggle, not see the hardship, to forget the moments of pain and difficulty that can loom so large in the process of finding oneself in a new place. The antidote, of course, is to focus on the dream, the motivation; to build a world in which to fit or to find a place of belonging.
New York New York is that big city of dreams.”
Shot by Tomanova in New York City, primarily during 2019 and 2020, and written by Beachdel, with a foreword by the iconic Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), “New York New York” will launch at Dashwood Books on September 29, followed by Tomanova’s solo exhibition, “Finding Magic Together” opening at C24 Gallery in Chelsea on October 7.
Learn more about the book
here.