Janet Delaney Red eye to New York

“Throughout the 1980s, Janet Delaney’s work in a San Francisco photo lab was punctuated by the last-minute flights she took to New York as a courier. In these unexpected moments in New York, Delaney wandered the streets with her Rolleiflex camera, taking in the rhythms and characters of this much-mythologised city. Though tired and often lost, the act of photographing gave Delaney a sense of presence and alertness, attuned to the crowds that overtook her and mesmerized by the depth of history woven into the city’s structures.

The colour photographs that make up this series are bursting with life and reveal the formation of Delaney’s generous approach to photographing the streets and the people who inhabit them, capturing the precious mix of private lives lived in public and the transient moments of connection between photographer and subject.

With a text by Amanda Maddox, Associate Curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.”