These portraits of New Yorkers are remarkable for their diversity, but also for the common humanity that binds them all. Photographer Horst Hamann asked New Yorkers—an adventurous but generally skeptical bunch—to come off the street and be photographed with their eyes closed. The resulting work is a profile of human characteristics and emotions. We see anxiety in some photographs, and bravura in others. Because their eyes are closed—as if dreaming—we somehow get closer to their true nature, and by extension, to our own.

Horst Hamann has become famous during the last twenty years for his panoramic photography. His internationally acclaimed and widely exhibited photographs of New York and Paris have been published by teNeues in the best-selling New York Vertical and Paris Vertical. Born in Germany, he is now based in New York.