OH SNAP: Photographer Evan Joseph has captured the city inside and out, from Palazzo Chupi (pictured) to Columbus Circle. He just released his book, “New York City at Night.” (
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Most photographers requesting hazard pay do it from hot spots like Baghdad or Kandahar. But if he wanted to, Evan Joseph could request it from 15 Central Park West or the clocktower at 1 Main St. in DUMBO.
If you follow high-end New York real estate, you’re likely familiar with Joseph’s work, even if you’ve never heard his name. When Dolly Lenz or Leonard Steinberg or many of the city’s other superbrokers need a spectacular picture of a listing, they call Joseph.
And he has happily risked life and limb for the perfect real estate shot.
“Every single day, I’m constantly hanging off a balcony or standing on something that won’t support my weight,” Joseph says. “I do it all the time when I’m trying to shoot penthouses.”
But he doesn’t just do it for residential real estate. He has a broad willingness to be a daredevil over architecture of all sorts.
You can see some of his most artful photos in the new book “New York City at Night,” written by Marcia Reiss. About 40 of the 110 photos Joseph put in the book were snapped while he was dangling over the side of a helicopter after dark.
“It’s cold out there, man,” Joseph says, recounting the nights he spent hovering over the Empire State Building or Ground Zero. The helicopter doors would open, and he would lug the heavy photo equipment over the side to begin snapping, 1,100 feet above the ground.
Joseph started shooting real estate about a decade ago, after a career working in an art gallery.
“Even though I was in the middle of the art world, I wanted to be making art, not selling it,” he says.
Real estate photography, at the time, “wasn’t seen as a big deal and super-important, and I treated it as a big deal and super-important.”
Joseph started shooting for a small firm, before moving up the ranks and working for Prudential Douglas Elliman, The Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and more.
He’s walked in and out of some of the plushest apartments in the city. Has it rubbed off on his own home, a turn-of-the-century Victorian in Jersey City?
“I spend all day cleaning up other people’s houses,” he says, meaning he has to arrange them to look good for a shoot. “My own tolerance for disarray is less.”