Rudolph Burckhardt and Edwin Denby, “A Walk through Astoria and Other Places in Queens” (1943), album of 71 gelatin silver prints mounted to 25 sheets of gray card, printed c. 1943, with one subsection, titled “Laurel Hill” including five typed sonnets by Edwin Denby (copyright Rudolph Burckhardt, courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York)
Burckhardt and Denby are central figures in New York’s cultural history, even if they are not as well known as they should be.
I imagine they took many walks in New York City. One was a photographer who was born and educated in Switzerland. He got viewers to think about all the legs and shoes they saw in a day. The other, his friend, was born in China shortly after the start of the 20th century. He got viewers to think about legs, feet, and torsos from another perspective: dance. The two men met in Basel in 1934. A year later, they came to New York and rented a fifth-floor walk-up in a building on West 21st Street, between 6th and 7th Avenue. Willem de Kooning lived in the building next door. The rest, as they say, is history.