Tod Papageorge started photographing intensely in New York’s Central Park in the late 1970s and continued working there until he moved from the city in the early 1990s. More than ten years later, he edited these pictures into a book which, in its marriage of the sensual and poetic, evokes the prelapsarian Eden suggested by its title.

This re-issue of Passing Through Eden duplicates the first 2007 edition in its entirety, including Papageorge’s thoughtful essay on the evolution of his photography and its basis in his early attempts to write poetry. His essay further describes how the first half of the book follows the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, from the Creation through the (metaphorical) generations that follow Cain, suggesting how, even in the heart of a modern city, we might find echoes of elemental Biblical tales being acted out around us by those drawn into the park and its promise of beauty and peace. This section of Passing Through Eden then leads to a run of pictures confirming that the human comedy is equally alive and well in the park, even as its landscape-delightful and wild-retakes center stage to end the book.

One might say that no artist has done so much for this piece of land since Frederick Law Olmsted. -John Szarkowski