The City in Pictures

Every great city is unique. Each has its own special character, a certain cosmopolitan energy that is its own, the product of its people, its history, its culture, its physical form. There is also a sameness to great cities, a featurelessness or banality that is born of generic growth and standardized forms of building with standardized materials. One of the strengths of the photography of Sze Tsung Leong is his ability to render both the individuality and the sameness of cities. Shot from elevated perspectives and apparently stripped of people (actually, they’re not), they have a sense of scientific detachment. Yet they are quite clearly the product of someone with great sympathy for urban environments and those who inhabit them (Leong is a recovering architect); The places Leong depicts somehow retain their distinct humanity. The pictures here are from a recent survey of Mexico City. (His photographs of Antwerp were recently featured here.)