Melissa O’Shaughnessy and Gus Powell

Watch a recording of the event here.

Join Aperture and the Strand Bookstore for a conversation between photographers Melissa O’Shaughnessy and Gus Powell, as they discuss O’Shaughnessy’s new book Perfect Strangers: New York City Street Photographs. 

Over the last seven years, Melissa O’Shaughnessy has photographed daily on the streets of New York. As one of a growing number of women street photographers contributing to this dynamic genre, O’Shaughnessy enters the territory with clarity and a distinctly humanist eye, offering a refreshing addition to the tradition of street photography. Through her curious and quirky vision, we witness the play of human activity on the glittering sidewalks of the city. Woven into her cast of characters are the lonely, the soulful, and the proud. She has fallen for them all―perfect strangers.

This is a ticketed event. Each ticket includes one single-use login for the virtual event and a copy of Perfect Strangers.

Melissa O’Shaughnessy (born in Minneapolis, 1960) is a New York–based photographer. Her work is included in Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz’s Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2017 edition) and has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world. She is a member of UP Photographers. 

Gus Powell (born in New York, 1974) is the author of The Company of Strangers (2003), The Lonely Ones (2015), Family Car Trouble (2019), and Brooklyn BRIEF (2019). His work has appeared in Aperture, the New Yorker, A Public Space, and Vogue. He is a member of UP Photographers and on the MFA faculty of the School of Visual Arts, New York. He is represented by Sasha Wolf Projects (New York), Lee Marks Fine Art (Shelbyville, Indiana), and Micamera (Milan).

Image: Melissa O’Shaughnessy, Liberty Street, 2018, from Perfect Strangers: New York City Street Photographs (Aperture, 2020) © Melissa O’Shaughnessy