72 Girls and Some Boys Who Could Be Models

In late 2005, Anne Daems roamed SoHo while on an art-residency grant from the International Studio & Curatorial Program, photographing young New Yorkers on sidewalks, in the subway, under scaffolding, and through shop windows without their knowledge. Working in the tradition of street photographers like Bill Cunningham, she recast these strangers as candid models, producing images that sit between fashion photography and covert surveillance. The pictures raise questions about voyeurism, youth, conventional beauty, and how casually observers classify people they pass on the street. The book includes an interview between Daems and artist Dan Graham, whose own work has long engaged with surveillance and public space; in it, Graham observes that Daems is interested not in technique but in ordinary people, and in how unstable the idea of "normal" really is. Published by J&L Books in an edition of 1000, the volume is now out of print.