Laundromat

Snorri Bros

PowerHouse Books, 2013 - Photography - 159 pages

Laundromats are a quintessential part of the New York City landscape: an indispensible element to many city dwellers' lives, they're an ersatz utility room shared with dozens of strangers at any given time, a moist environment of humming machines and strange clothes. No other public facility gathers so many people under one roof to engage in one of the most intimate rituals in which the modern human routinely performs, that of making clean again one's outer and under garments. What New Yorker has never experienced the dread of removing another's...stuff...from a dryer having completed its cycle in order to get on with it and be released from the temporary prison of chore....

Laundromats are as varied as the people inside. They often reflect the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the neighborhood they reside in (announcements, flags, and symbols displayed often reveal something about their mainly mom-and-pop owners), yet they additionally possess a story of commercial storefront design, inspired and mundane: the trend date of awning design and lettering; the poster advertising for cleaning; the refreshment options for adults and their charges. Neighborhood laundromats are one of the last holdouts of the disappearing storefronts of New York City as small shops are driven out of business by chains and venture-capital initiatives. Like the beloved Korean green grocer/bodega/Arab deli, someday soon there could be far fewer of these ugly ducklings, and another genuine element of New York's street life will be...washed away.

Laundromat was photographed from 2008 to 2012 and represents all five New York boroughs and most of its neighborhoods.

About the author

Snorri Sturluson is an Icelandic director and photographer. He is best known for his work as a member of the directing / photography collective Snorri Bros. Snorri has lived in New York since 2001 and as part of the Snorri Bros. helmed numerous high profile advertising campaigns for TV, print, and Internet for many of the world's best known brands as well as directing music videos and other content for various purposes. Along with being a professional image-maker and storyteller in the commercial world Snorri is developing several feature film scripts. Laundromat is the third book of photographs under the Snorri Bros. moniker but it is the first one consisting solely of photographs by Snorri Sturluson.

D. Foy's work has appeared in Post Road, The Literary Review, The Georgia Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, and Quick Fiction, to name a few. His story, "Barnacles of the Fuzz," recently made it to the pages of Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, edited by Cal Morgan, and essays are forthcoming in Frequencies and BOMB. His novel, Made to Break, is due out from Two Dollar Radio in February 2014. He lives in Brooklyn.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Laundromat
• Author: Snorri Bros
• Photographs by: Snorri Bros
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: PowerHouse Books, 2013
• ISBN: 1576876233, 9781576876237
• Length: 159 pages
• Subjects: Photography / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General; Photography / Subjects & Themes / Architectural & Industrial