NEW YORK, NY.- In America’s Stage: Times Square, street photographer Betsy Karel uses five New York City blocks as a metaphor for urban America today. Her premise is that many of the major trends of our society are present in Times Square: globalism, consumerism, ubiquitous sexualization, hucksterism, surveillance, narcissism. All are compressed and amplified here. In Karel’s photos fantasy parades as reality, corporate interests invade almost all public spaces, and Times Square becomes a vivid, almost hyper-realistic, form of theatre.

“Karel is a native New Yorker who haunted Times Square to find what most of the city’s dwellers seek to avoid: the tourists and everything that exists for them in that historic mecca. She records the intermingling of those responsible for the cacophony, those reacting and those who appear oblivious. She recognized the sadness that co-exists with outrageous exhibitionism, the excessive signs competing for attention with 24/7 congestion, workers, beggars and lovers.” —Anne Wilkes Tucker

Betsy Karel was born in New York City in 1946 and today lives in Washington D.C. Karel worked as an award-winning photojournalist in the 1970s. In 1998, after a hiatus of nearly 20 years working as a professional photographer, she participated in “The Way Home,” a national exhibition on homelessness in America. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Yale University Art Gallery. Steidl has published Karel’s Bombay Jadoo (2007), which was shortlisted for the 2008 Deutscher Fotobuchpreis.