New York is a city that soars. It reaches further, tries harder, and stretches higher than any other place on earth. Here, in the first book to truly celebrate the city's vertical appeal, Horst Hamann offers a completely new perspective on the American metropolis. Using a vintage panoramic camera tilted ninety degrees, Hamann spent nearly five years painstakingly setting up shot after shot, often finding himself balancing precariously out a window ledge, patiently waiting for the perfect lighting - and wind - conditions. The result is a truly original and astonishing array of images that capture New York's towering presence in a way no other photographer ever has.

From the steel canyons of lower Manhattan to the lofty heights of midtown's glamorous penthouses, Hamann's stark black and white compositions lend his photographs a dramatic, often dreamlike quality. His unique interpretations of such familiar sights as the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, or a Lower East Side tenement, encourage us to reexamine a place we thought we knew and remind us, as Volker Skierka points out in his introduction, that "even the most wretched corner is a view of something big, perhaps a landmark waiting to be released." Already the recipient of three prestigious photography awards, New York Vertical is a book as spectacular, as impressive, and as unusual as the subject it gloriously depicts.