Orpheus Descending by Clayton Burkhart

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Orpheus Descending

Photographs by Clayton Burkhart.

Published by Umbrage Editions.

112 pages. 94 color photographs. Dimensions (in inches): 11.8 x 8.9 x 0.6.

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Orpheus Descending

Photographs by Clayton Burkhart

In the fading light of day, the streets of New York City take on a mythical appearance. People’s complexions turn shades of green and red in the city’s neon lights and taxis create yellow streaks against skyscrapers.

Photographer Clayton Burkhart pursues these quiet, neon-lit moments in his book, Orpheus Descending. It is a 20-year, sorrow-filled photographic journey through the darkened streets of New York.

The photographs are eerily identical. They show different boroughs and different people, but the forlorn undercurrent is always the same. These are quiet, lonely moments in a bustling city.

We see a sole man in a dark suit walking across a pedestrian bridge. His silhouette is aglow in the light from the skyscrapers behind him. It is an image we see again and again. Men and women dressed in suits, walking the streets alone, briefcases in tow.

There is an almost unsettling quality to Burkhart’s collection. The desolate images haunt and linger, highlighting moments of disquieting emptiness. The streets are almost always empty, the people few and far between — a rarity in the bustling metropolis.

We see blurred faces, a body covered with a sheet, the dispossessed, empty waiting rooms, a one-legged man and garbage-splattered streets. The nude body of a faceless woman occasionally pops up among these downtrodden images, creating a sense of longing but not intimacy.

In a collection of photographs where a solitary figure is the central theme, a giant billboard portrait of a man and a woman juts out against the black backdrop. The woman is blonde and she is laughing with her eyes closed. The man stands behind her, leaning over her with a smile.

It is a sweet, innocent moment — and because there are no other moments like this in the rest of the book, we long for the human touch even more.

About Clayton Burkhart

Photographer Clayton Burkhart was born in Buffalo, New York in 1966. He studied photography and cinema at New York University. Since 1992, he has worked in both the fashion and the advertising industries. He has also produced a number of short films based on New York’s nighttime streets.

Reviewed by Christina Erb.

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