Vertical New Yorkers

These portraits of New Yorkers are remerkable for their diversity, but also for the common humanity that binds them all. Photgrapher Horst Hamann asked New Yorkers-an adventurous but generally skeptical bunch-to come off the street and be photographed with their eyes closed. The resulting work is a profile of human characteristics and emotions. We see anxiety in some photographs, and bravura in others. Because their eyes are closed-as if dreaming-we somehow get closer to their true nature, and by extension, to our own.