New York
1940

Modernist photographer Andreas Feininger moved to New York City in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. He soon began photographing the city in black-and-white, often shooting vertiginous views of towering skyscrapers marked by technical precision and attention to architectural detail. He also catalogued numerous storefronts in Manhattan’s downtown neighborhoods—the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, and elsewhere. This image of a shop selling wholesale snails is unusual in that Feininger did not give it a more specific title―many comparable images received captions detailing their exact locations. But like his other urban images, New York displays Feininger’s interest in capturing reflections and precise formal geometries.