Richard Renaldi: Manhattan Sunday

Manhattan Sunday is part homage to a slice of New York nightlife, and part celebration of New York as palimpsest—an evolving form onto which millions of people have and continue to project their ideal selves and ideal lives.

In the essay that accompanies his photographs, Richard Renaldi describes his experiences as a young man in the late 1980s who had recently embraced his gay identity, and of finding a home in “the mystery and abandonment of the club, the nightscape, and then finally daybreak,” each offering a “transformation of Manhattan from the known world into a dreamscape of characters acting out their fantasies on a grand stage.” Drawing heavily on his personal subcultural pathways, Renaldi captures that ethereal moment when Saturday night bleeds into Sunday morning across the borough of Manhattan.

This collection of portraits, landscapes, and club interiors evokes the vibrant nighttime rhythms of a city that persists in both its decadence and its dreams, despite beliefs to the contrary.

Manhattan Sunday is a personal memoir that also offers a reflection the city’s evolving identity—one that still carries with it and cherishes the echoes of its past.