Baldwin Lee waited until the streets of New York had emptied of people, then took these photos with a 4x5 view camera that have sat unseen for 47 years
September 13, 2026
Every morning, a young Chinese-American photographer fresh out of Yale would set an alarm for well before sunrise, drive from New England into Manhattan, then haul a wooden box camera and a tripod out onto pavements that were, by design, as empty as he could find them. That was Baldwin Lee’s routine through the winters of 1975 to 1979.
Lee was using a 4×5 view camera, his first time…