Irina Rozovsky. Image from In Plain Air (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK.

In her new book, In Plain Air, photographer Irina Rozovsky pays homage to Prospect Park with a collection of images that showcases her ethereal signature aesthetic. Inspired by a motorboat sojourn that the artist took around the park’s southern lake in 2011, the series features New Yorkers from all walks of life enjoying the public space—from families to lovers, of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds.

In these 57 photographs, taken over the course of the past ten years, the Russian-born artist captures the paradoxical allure of the park’s tree-lined ponds and pathways, verdant and beautiful while simultaneously “littered with soda cans and cigarette butts.” While the park’s elegance and greenery are celebrated with appropriate reverence, it is the park’s myriad visitors that most intrigue the photographer. To Rozovsky, the park’s occupants perfectly represent the melting pot that is New York City, a beautiful, bustling blend of people sharing and contributing to the same space.

In one image, three women dressed in colorful wraps and headscarves fish with homemade poles by the water’s edge. In another, Rozovsky hones in on a woman enjoying a cigarette, mid-exhale, basking in the crepuscular glow of the sunset, a collection of out-of-focus strangers in the background sharing the moment. The diffuse light, reminiscent of the Plein-air painters Renoir and Monet (and from which Rozovsky took inspiration for the book’s title) imbues each scene with a sense of serenity so rarely attained in this great city of ours.

There is a romanticism to Rozovsky’s aesthetic that is hard to not get swept up in. The soft, often sepia-toned hues imbue each photograph with an inescapable nostalgia. Many of the images are taken at the park’s southern lake, often at twilight or dawn, affording the artists’ subjects a diaphanous aura. Yet while many images possess a familiar “golden” quality evocative of summer evenings, there are several, including one of a mother pushing a stroller accompanied by another young boy, that are bathed in an array of pinks, purples, and quiet, cool blues. That Rozovsky is able to capture the great breadth of the colors in the Prospect Park palette while maintaining her signature softness of style throughout, is a testament to her talent, and adds variety to a collection centered on a single subject.

In Plain Air is an exquisite ode to a space that serves as a verdant oasis amid the frenetic, hyper-competitive buzz of the concrete jungle—a space that equalizes its vast array of occupants, so often separated in modern metropolitan society. In this period of political turbulence, as we begin to emerge from the strange seclusion of a pandemic that took so much from New York, in particular, this book is a welcome reminder of this city’s resilience, beauty, and, multiplicity. As Rozovsky puts it, “I love New York so much, there’s nowhere like it… it’s a place of survivors.”