Ghostly images of vacant homes, sensitively captured.
No one lives here anymore.
Christmas decorations. Framed family photos. Vintage clothing. These are some of the items that are gathering dust in this affecting collection of photographs of abandoned houses. A documentarian, Sansivero photographed these places during his travels in the American Northeast, Midwest, and South. He notes that there are, shockingly, more than 15 million vacant houses in the country. Unlike much so-called ruin porn—soulless images that glamorize the blight they showcase—Sansivero’s photos bring out the humanity of the people who once occupied these buildings. As he writes in his introduction, “With each new discovery and each door that opens, I get a glimpse into the history of not only a building but also a person’s life.” There are signs of life everywhere. In a bedroom of a Maryland house are a pram and crib; a porcelain basin and pitchers sit on a nearby dresser. It’d be a scene of midcentury domestic tranquility were it not for the peeling paint, a moth-eaten lampshade, and ivy snaking its way through a window. On a dresser in Delaware County, New York, is an assortment of trinkets from long-ago journeys. Here, too, the walls are coming apart and the dust is thick. Most heartrending are children’s rooms—filled with dolls, stuffed animals, and books—and homes of the elderly, their canes and crutches and stacks of paper the last vestiges of compromised existences. Several of the houses have pianos—one can imagine the out-of-tune notes of a red, white, and blue upright made in 1976, a portrait of a military officer hanging above it, askew. Many of the structures are hidden in woods and dangerous to enter; in one of the photo captions, Sansivero says his leg went through a floor. His photographs recall the eerie images of abandoned buildings in Chernobyl after the 1986 nuclear accident. But no cataclysmic disaster befell the houses in this book. Instead, what we see is the creeping decay of much of American life.
Ghostly images of vacant homes, sensitively captured.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781648294389
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Artisan
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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