£40 / $54.00, Kriss Grave Projects, hardback, 128 pages, ISBN: 9781954877191
I didn’t expect to enjoy Waterworks. A photo book dedicated to New York City’s hidden water system doesn’t exactly scream page-turner. But Stanley Greenberg’s black & white images, made in the early 1990s, reveal a subterranean world of beauty, geometry and human ingenuity. This isn’t just infrastructure – it’s industrial poetry.
Greenberg, armed with access granted by the Department of Environmental Protection, takes us below the surface and behind locked gates, photographing valve chambers, pumping stations, pressure regulators and tunnels that few New Yorkers have ever seen – but all depend on. There’s something monumental about the silence and scale he captures. These are cathedrals of utility.
The book itself is beautifully made. Printed by Kris Graves Projects, it…