INTERVIEW

James & Karla Murray

The New York photographers have just published a second book of storefront pictures. Niall Hampton finds out more

James and Karla Murray

Architectural and interior photographers

Husband-and-wife photographers and videographers, the Murrays are based in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City.

Since the late 1990s, they have documented New York streetscapes through the lens of storefronts and shop owners, in an effort to capture the character of individual neighbourhoods.

Having had their work exhibited in the US and Europe, the Murrays have also published four books of their photography, including New York Nights and Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC.

jamesandkarlamurray.com Instagram: @jamesandkarla

Cities constantly evolve to meet the needs of the people who live and work in them, but this inevitable evolution has its downsides. Local neighbourhoods full of character aren’t immune to the grand plans of property developers and many small business owners – active in their communities for generations – are concerned about such ‘progress’ and what it means for them.

With many beloved ‘mom-and-pop’ store frontages disappearing from New York City’s streets, photographers James and Karla Murray decided to document them for posterity. As their latest storefronts photo book goes on sale, we spoke to the couple to find out more.

How did the book come together?

Karla: It was born from an entirely different project. We were documenting graffiti art and, in the 1990s, these mom-and-pop stores became almost parallel to graffiti. Graffiti is a temporary art form so it’s important to document it when you see it and we began to notice that a lot of these small places, even in the early 2000s, had started closing.

James: We had collected this vast collection of film photos and I remember the day the editor for the graffiti book was over at our house. We were editing the book and we had photographs of a bunch of storefronts in long strips on our wall. Karla: He happened to glance up at our wall and asked ‘What’s that stuff?’, and we said it was just mom-and-pop stores in New York. He was from California, so we didn’t think he’d have any interest in what a store in New York was like. He asked us to take one of the strips out of the frame and started folding the photos into the book. He asked if we had any more pictures like these and we said there were thousands, which we’d put in a shoe box. The editor also asked whether we’d spoken to the owners of the stores about taking photos of them, and so I pulled out this huge box of tape recorder cassettes with all our interviews. I told him that interviewing the artists was something we did when we photographed the graffiti art. He then cleared the table and said that the storefronts should be our next project. So that’s