György Lörinczy’s New York, New York captures the pulse of New York City in 1968 through avant-garde experimental techniques. Created during a period of social upheaval and countercultural movements, Lörinczy’s project immerses viewers in the energy of a city defined by hippies, the Civil Rights Movement, student protests, and the broader avant-garde art scene. As a Hungarian photographer granted rare access to travel abroad due to his government’s relaxed restrictions, Lörinczy embraced the freedom and chaos of New York with an unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness approach that set his work apart from traditional documentary photography.
Rather than focusing on landmark architecture or well-known urban scenes, he turned his lens to the East Village and its bohemian inhabitants, capturing the raw and uninhibited essence of the city’s counterculture. His images, rough in texture and often blurred or grainy, exude a hallucinatory, manic exuberance. While in New York, Lörinczy experimented with self-made emulsions on photo paper and employed techniques such as extreme grain, blur, solarisation, and printing on tracing paper and translucent, colourful wax paper, enhancing the material quality of his visual storytelling. These experimental approaches align Lörinczy’s work with the likes of William Klein and Daidō Moriyama, both of whom employed radical stylistic choices to break from traditional visual language. Unlike Klein, however, Lörinczy's perspective lacks an overt social critique, instead offering a vibrant and immersive take on the city's spirit.
Since publication, New York, New York has been periodically revisited in exhibitions—among them NEW YORK — André Kertész / György Lőrinczy at Vintage Galéria, Budapest (2020), and a two-person presentation at Mai Manó House / Hungarian House of Photography (2021). Prints and archival material are now housed in Hungarian public collections.
