New City, Old Blues

For more than a decade, Andre D. Wagner has explored and documented New York City street life, with a particular focus on the changing landscape of Bushwick, Brooklyn, where he has lived and worked since 2011. His work offers an intimate portrait of city life shaped by connection, responsibility and care. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Wagner came to New York to pursue a degree in social work, but ultimately found his voice through the camera. He is also deeply committed to photographic processes, developing his own black-and-white negatives and making gelatin silver prints in his own darkroom. Wagners work belongs to a lineage of American street photography that investigates the social landscape and addresses questions of race, class and identity. His photographs capture the joys and hardships of Black life in the city: moments of tenderness and distance, humor and melancholy, solitude and communion. This publication, representing the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize, features work made between 2014 and 2024, much of it never published before. The book also includes an essay by the acclaimed writer Hanif Abdurraqib. Copublished with The Gordon Parks Foundation