Reiner Leist is a German-born photographer, who emigrated to the United States and lives in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

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Early Life

Leist has emigrated twice, from West Germany to South Africa (1988-1994) and then from South Africa to the United States.

He studied Visual Arts and Photography in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 and New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

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Career

His works are ongoing, often participatory projects, which examine the relationship between individual lives and societies, history, landscape and architecture. For instance, Leist submitted an entry to the World Trade Center

World Trade Center

The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...

 Site Memorial Competition in which he proposed erecting 2,792 memorial telephone booths around the "footprints" of the former WTC site, around New York City or in any of the 92 counties where victims were from. The phones would be arbitrarily connected to another memorial phone and would let callers talk with each other or hear a pre-recorded message about a victim of the WTC disaster. Hise entry did not win.

Since 1994, Leist has worked on "American Portraits" and since 2001 on several projects in Asia.

From 1995 to 2005, Leist took photographs of metropolitan life through the window of his 26th floor New York apartment on 8th Avenue, using a 19th century full plate camera. He took pictures each day he was in New York, whenever he found the time, at every time of day, in all kinds of weather and every position of the sun. The resulting bulk of around 2,200 photographs documents both the every-day life and change of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, including the historic event of the destruction of the World Trade Center

World Trade Center

The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...

 on September 11, 2001. Parts of the collection have been published in book form under the title Eleven Septembers: Photographs by REINER LEIST.

He has had numerous exhibitions in Germany, USA and Japan. Leist presently teaches at Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

, City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

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