Wild Nights in the Big City: Tod Seelie's New York

Tod Seelie has been photographing New York's hedonistic sub- and countercultures since the early 2000s. A book of his photographs, Bright Nights: Photographs of Another New York (Prestel) takes the reader, goggle-eyed, through a city of wild parties, bloodied noses, chaotic street carnivals, and raucuous concerts. The captions tell their own story of his roving eye: "Couple making out a tofu wrestling event, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn 2010" and "One-shoe stage diving at a warehouse show, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2009." There are quieter moments captured, like the many multi-colored lights of a building, or a pile of trash left on the street after Hurricane Sandy. But the energy of the book, animated by fire, street-lights and strobe, comes from Seelie's subjects dancing, shouting, sweating, and partying at events like Brooklyn's Bike Kill. The city in Seelie's lens is young, thrillingly kinetic and edgily vibrant, countering the widespread assumption that mega-money has pushed all such wildness out. As Jeff Stark, editor of Nonsense NYC, a weekly e-mail list about independent arts and culture, says in his introduction to the book, Seelie shows "the ecstatic joy of living life on the margins of New York City...life is way too awesome not to live it."

ÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ© Tod Seelie