Times Square is often photographed as an emblem of brightness and spectacle. In Times Squared, Toby Old turns instead toward the dense social theatre beneath that familiar image. Made over more than twenty-five years, his photographs observe the district at different hours, in changing seasons and under varied light, following the parades, theatres, sporting events, sex shops and working industries that occupied the same compressed territory.

Old’s square-format camera isolates brief, sometimes disquieting encounters at the edges of public life. Rather than arranging Times Square into a seamless urban panorama, he treats it as a succession of sharply bounded moments, each attached to a particular place and period. Bodies, gestures and events become evidence of a city continually remaking its public face. The resulting portrait encompasses entertainment and commerce, conformity and eccentricity, while resisting the polished mythology usually associated with the district.

Published by Chameleon Books in 2002, the 120-page volume presents 114 full-page duotone photographs. Their sustained repetition gives weight to Old’s long engagement with the area: individual scenes remain autonomous, yet together they register continuities and changes across decades. An introduction by photographer Richard Gordon provides a further point of entry into Old’s practice and the direct, unsentimental character of the pictures.

For a serious photobook collection, Times Squared merits attention as a concentrated, long-duration account of one of New York’s most heavily represented places. Its significance lies not simply in its location but in the distance between the district’s iconic reputation and the lives Old chose to frame. The square images, duotone presentation and extended span of observation make the book a considered study of American public culture as it appears in passing—crowded, theatrical and resistant to easy order.