Passing Through Eden

Tod Papageorge started photographing intensely in New York's Central Park in the late 1970s and continued working there until he moved from the city in the early 1990s. More than ten years later, he edited these pictures into a book which, in its marriage of the sensual and poetic, evokes the prelapsarian Eden suggested by its title. This re-issue of Passing Through Eden duplicates the first 2007 edition in its entirety, including Papageorge's thoughtful essay on the evolution of his photography and its basis in his early attempts to write poetry. His essay further describes how the first half of the book follows the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, from the Creation through the (metaphorical) generations that follow Cain, suggesting how, even in the heart of a modern city, we might find echoes of elemental Biblical tales being acted out around us by those drawn into the park and its promise of beauty and peace. This section of Passing Through Eden then leads to a run of pictures confirming that the human comedy is equally alive and well in the park, even as its landscapedelightful and wildretakes center stage to end the book.

Auteur
Tod Papageorge was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1940, and began photographing during his last semester of college before graduating with a degree in English literature in 1962. In the 1970s he received two Guggenheim Fellowships and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grants, and in 1979 he was named Walker Evans Professor at the Yale School of Art, where he was also Director of Graduate Studies of Photography until 2013. His work has been widely exhibited and is represented in over 30 major public collections. In 2009 Papageorge was a resident at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2010 he was awarded the Rome Commission in Photography. In 2012 he received the Lucie Award for documentary photography. Steidl has published Papageorge's Passing Through Eden. Photographs of Central Park (2007) and Dr. Blankman's New York (2018), now to be released in new editions.