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NEW YORK BARS AT DAWN Most of us have experienced that cinematic cliché of walking down a street at night and succumbing to the voyeuristic pull to gaze from the shadows into the warm lights of the bars along our routes. We’ve taken in the clinking of glasses, the bodies pressed into bar stools or against one another, the volume of the voices rising ever louder to compete with the music. Maybe we wished we were there, in the midst of it all, or maybe not. Regardless, the super-charged atmosphere of revelry would have added a bit of electricity to the air, drawing power from the hum of conversations and connections, cocktails, and confessions. But what of a bar with no people in it? Would they still have the same ability to draw our eyes and spark our imaginations? This is the question that Daniel Root asked when he embarked on a visual journey to capture the soul of New York's legendary bar scene during the hushed hours before sunrise. The result is a mesmerizing photographic collection of empty spaces in his book, New York Bars at Dawn. Root's photographic odyssey began unexpectedly: “While on an early morning walk, I happened to look in the window of 7B/ Horseshoe Bar and noticed the unusual lighting of a bar after closing time. A lone light left on over the cash register, the glow of the exit sign, the beer sign, neon—it seemed to call for a photograph. Out of curiosity I looked in at Niagara, the next bar on my walk, and they, too, had a weird mix of lighting and shadows. It was a world I had never noticed before, and another photo was taken. With that, a photo project evolved. I photographed about 1,200 bars over a six-year period with “New York Bars at Dawn” containing about 200 of the most iconic, beautiful, unusual, and/or popular bars; empty bars where their essence comes to life in their silence.” >> Dr. Clark
16 / CIGAR & SPIRITS
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2023
Photos courtesy of Abbeville Press.
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