Armen Berenson

Land, City, Sea and Sky shows Armen Berenson photographing one thing at a time. Across the album’s four parts, he picks a single subject and strips away everything around it until it stands alone: the moon against pure black, two whales fading into a white sky, a shark floating in darkness with no sign of the tank. The pictures work because of what he leaves out.

He favors unusual angles, looking straight up at Atlas in Rockefeller Center or straight down from a drone over a coastline, because those views flatten the world into lines and shapes. He doesn’t force the geometry. He spots it where it already exists: a shark’s gills lined up like sheet music, the Manhattan Bridge tower shaped like a cathedral arch, waves layering a beach in stripes.

The album’s color is restrained. Most of it is black and white, and when color appears it is usually one bold red, from the New Yorker sign or the lit deck of the Empire State Building.