Gaudet Guillaume - PhotoCity New York

The sun has been up for an hour and already cycle commuters are pedalling across Brooklyn Bridges iconic suspended span over the East River to begin their working day in Manhattan. From the bridges boardwalk you can spy five other bridges and, in the distance, the Statue of Liberty welcoming huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Manhattans skyline, now with One World Trade Center ahead, never fails to thrill. Youll find photos of these iconic sights and more among these pages but this is a book about so much more than a tourism tick-list of New York Citys highlights.

Our ambition was to chronicle a day in the life of this greatest of cities from the perspective of a photographer who knows and loves it. We wanted to present not just the famous sights but also New Yorks daily rhythms as a local would experience them. The book is loosely organised according to the passage of a day and night in the city: we start with a ferry trip in dawns cool light, a coffee, and yoga at Bryant Park, and finish with a cocktail in a speakeasy-style bar then dancing in a nightclub. Along the way we follow the photographer on his peregrinations through New Yorks diverse neighbourhoods, exploring their signature experiences, from Wall St finance and Times Squares neon to skateparks, street art, neighbourhood basketball courts, delis and diners, and New Yorks great galleries and museums. It would be impossible to capture all of New York Citys incomparable variety but readers will discover its personality and personalities beyond the famous sights.

For a task of this scale, we sought a photographer for whom New York was more than just a home. Guillaume Gaudet who lives in Queens and specialises in travel, portraiture, interiors, lifestyle and fashion photography moved to New York in 2007 and fell in love with the city. This melting pot has become an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me, he says. Helping Guillaume was writer Zora ONeill, another Queens resident. Zora moved to New York in 1998, drawn by the citys energy and diversity. She has written for Lonely Planet since 2005, and she is the author of the travel memoir All Strangers Are Kin, about studying Arabic and travelling in the Middle East.

Between them, they photographed and described all these facets of New York life. The result is this chronologically-ordered visual odyssey through one of the worlds great cities, a taste of New York that may give first-time visitors fresh ideas of what to see and do, and also inspire long-time lovers of the metropolis to make another trip to The Big Apple.

0600: M is for Manhattan: the neo-Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was the worlds longest suspension bridge when it was erected in 1883, form a kind of welcome sign to New York, as well as one of the citys most iconic skyline views. The bridge is now a National Historic Landmark.

I shot this image in summer at 6am. As I live in Queens, I woke up at 4.30am to be able to have a coffee and a little breakfast before heading to the bridge. Going there at sunrise is the only way to get some photos without the crowd. Tourists arrive early and it gets packed pretty fast. In the background you can see a photographer shooting a model. He knows that you have to come very early to get the best light and a quiet environment.

- Guillaume Gaudet

The Brooklyn Bridge forms a key link between the boroughs. Along with 100,000 or so cars, more than 4000 pedestrians and 2600 cyclists make use of the bridge every single day, via an old-fashioned boardwalk made of more than 11,000 hardwood planks, which are replaced every 35 years.

This is the view that inspired the nickname of the former warehouse district now known as Dumbo: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The industrial heritage has given way to film screenings, a seasonal pop-up swimming pool and a Shakespeare at Sunset theatre season every summer.

In Dumbo, the once-industrial waterfront has been remade as a ribbon of green park space, with up-close views of the piers of Manhattan Bridge. To link all the revived areas, a new ferry service was introduced in 2017, connecting piers in Queens and Brooklyn with Manhattan.

Illustration courtesy of Shepard Fairey/Obeygiant.com

Dumbos redbrick warehouse walls, once neglected, now make great workspace for street artists such as Shepard Fairey. More old-fashioned attractions include Janes Carousel, a 1920s fairground ride complete with 48 beautifully painted wooden horses contained in a glass structure designed by architect Jean Nouvel.

Staten Island is the only borough not connected to Manhattan by a bridge, so many residents make the commute by ferry. The payoff for a slight increase in transit hassle? Twenty-five peaceful minutes on the water, with dazzling views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

Since the city began operating the ferry in 1905, it has always been inexpensive, and after a few fare negotiations the price was reduced in 1997 to absolutely nothing. This free service is a boon for residents and one of the most popular sightseeing deals for visitors.

Completed in 1909, the Manhattan Bridge was the last of three bridges connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. Brooklyn Bridge is to the south and Williamsburg Bridge to the north, creating a handy mnemonic for their order: BMW.

The East River Greenway runs along the waters edge, connecting with other paths to form a full 31 mile (50km) loop around the island of Manhattan. Its a mixed bag of good and bad, but among the former are views of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, as well as the United Nations Plaza.

This picture is a good example of my street photography style. It combines key factors: a New York background, a reflection (puddle or glass) and people, some life to create a story. When I see a big puddle, I always try to get something out of it. I can wait for half-an-hour before anything interesting happens but sometimes its worth the wait. I shot this one around 6am on a Sunday but there were already runners, passersby and bikers on the East River Bikeway, so I didnt have to wait long for the shot.

- Guillaume Gaudet