Walks in My New York: A Story in Paintings, Photographs, and Text

This is a book about New York City, as seen through the eyes and sensibilities of Danish architect and artist Mikael Olrik. The combination of watercolor, photograph and text offers the reader an original, multi-dimensional experience of a city so well known and yet still to be discovered, still mystifying. Trained to identify both what is important and what is distinctive, Olrik is gifted, with an intuitive sense of what to capture, what is abiding and totemic about a particular place. While one might anticipate the pastoral Central Park scenes and such landmarks as the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge, the images of Soho tenements and Williamsburg street scenes serve as stark reminders that New York may very well be the most complex city in the world, a city Mikael Olrik respectfully refers to as a living organism. After many extended stays there, he is comfortable in New York; always ready to process its changes and embrace its surprises, but never complacent or jaded. 'Walks in My New York" is just that - a strolling, personal tour of New York City and parts of four of its boroughs.

Thoughtful guide, Mikael invites you to join him. Positioning you at each stop, he gives you the broad view of an architect, the specificity of an artist, the straight-forwardness of a photographer, and the companionable text of a diarist. You are drawn in and made complicit in the experience. As a bonus, small maps accompany each entry and act as a sort of 'GPS' in print. Mikael Olrik sees to it that you have everything you need to explore a great and restless city abounding in sights and stories. Everything, that is, except a pair of sturdy walking shoes!