The title 270 West 17th Street # 20c NY NY 10011 refers to the precise address of the studio at the heart of Chelsea that is placed at the disposal of art photographers by the Republic of Austria. It is where Matthias Herrmann set up his artistic base camp in winter 2011/12 and from where he ventured out on his photographic forays through the city of New York and beyond, to Washington, Philadelphia, New Haven and Hartford. Equipped exclusively with an analogue medium-format camera – “no Photoshop, no cropping, no tripod” (Herrmann) – the artist set off to track down all that is magical about everyday life. In his straight photographs, not unlike a poetic documentation, an anonymous street becomes the stage for the theatre of the absurd, on a par with renowned exhibition venues in the museum landscape. Detailing as a characteristic photographic style is key to Herrmann’s work, and the strict sequencing of the photographs in the book make it a defining element.
Matthias Herrmann’s book is something of a tribute to metropolitan New York, the confession of a flâneur who reveals his itineraries to the onlooker in the form of a photographic diary.

Matthias Herrmann, *1963 in Munich, Germany. Lives and works in Vienna and Riparbella, Italy.