Season’s Greetings, New York Style!
The Artstor staff wishes you happy holidays with some extraordinary images of our hometown of New York City during the holiday season stemming back to the 19th century. For example, the crowds of shoppers in D. Rellam’s print from 1874, “Holiday Greens–A Scene in Washington Market, New York” 1 are recognizable today. While the market was razed in the early 1970s, the image echoes the crowds in the popular Union Square Holiday Market, where many of us will be shopping this month.
The eternal hustle and bustle of the holidays in our metropolis is captured in abstract form in New Yorkers Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s “Christmas Card for Ray and Charles Eames” (1946) 2.
Another timeless image that many of us in New York recognize is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Angel Tree” (18th-19th century) 3, which was first exhibited in 1957 and has since become an annual tradition.
The audience in Inge Morath’s three photographs of “Ice skaters at Christmas Show on Madison Avenue” (1958) 4 radiates an innocence that unexpectedly reappears decades later in Erich Hartmann’s “World Financial Center; Christmas lights” (1990)4. Meanwhile, Susan Meisela’s series of Santa Claus photos (1976-1977) 4 portray the grit that we all know and—most of the time—love in the city, as does Nan Goldin’s “Sharon with the Christmas Tree, New York City” (1990) 5.
Season’s Greetings, wherever you are! We invite you to search the Artstor Digital Library for more holiday images from around the world, including places as far-flung as Cuba, Lebanon, Hungary, and Cambodia.