The frenetic enchantment of New York City

New York City thrives on frenetic activity. So loud is the drum beat of its energy and so bright the lights of its urban grid that there can often be no escaping its intoxicating restlessness.

But this, of course, is its allure — and what drew French Algerian photojournalist Jean-Pierre Laffont to its mean streets in 1965 to begin his career.

Over the course of the next 50 years, Laffont would become one of the world's top photojournalists, capturing stories all over the world. But no matter where his work took him, his heart and his home would always be in New York.

During his decades in the city, Laffont — who still calls New York home — traversed the five boroughs, focusing his lens on the residents, visitors, the known, and unknown. He captured small moments of quiet, enormous historic events, and the everyday spectacles for which the city is so well known.

Now, for the first time, Laffont's New York City photographs have been exclusively collected in an impressive retrospective, New York City Up and Down (Glitterati Incorporated).

"J.P. had a restless eye," Eliane Laffont, the photographer's editor and wife, writes in the book's afterward. "He worked constantly, chasing images and photographing everything: crises, tragedies, daily news, social issues, debates at the United Nations, and even Hollywood movie stars and European celebrities visiting the city."

Brooklyn, Summer 1966. | Jean-Pierre Laffont shares his cameras with children from Bedford-Stuyvesant. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

New York City Up and Down captures the impressive breadth of the city's political and social change (from Hair to Wall Street), the radical inequality of its tightly packed residents (from Bed-Stuy to Park Avenue), and the dizzying visual geography of its urban landscape (from the terraced crown of the Chrysler Building to the subterranean depths of the Holland Tunnel).

There are few places in this city that haven't been subject to Laffont's keen eye and focused lens.

"[Laffont] never stopped tracking the city's dream of itself," Joan Juliet Buck writes in book's introduction. "He captured the exhilaration it provokes, the disappointment it metes out. Each of the photographs in this remarkable book about the city Laffont made his home captures the longing, bravado, and the blatancy of New York, as well as its monumental mess."

Below, dive into the city that never sleeps with a selection of works from Laffont's exhilarating new book, New York City Up and Down.

Manhattan, 1965. | Riverside Park and 81st Street. Sophie and Elyzabeth Markevitch look through the gate at a train passing under Riverside Park. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

Lower East Side, 1973. | In the early 1970s, the city experienced 250 serious fires a day. The Fire Department of the City of New York has served the city since 1865. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

Manhattan, 1969. | On the one-year anniversary of its Broadway debut, the cast of the rock musical Hair gave a free performance in Central Park. Several of its songs became anti-Vietnam War anthems. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

Manhattan, September 1981. | Robin Williams does a street performance in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Manhattan, Oct. 2, 1979. | A massive crowd packs the inside and outside of the church on Pope John Paul II's first visit to New York City. | (From New York City Up and Down, by Jean-Pierre Laffont copyright 2017, published by Glitterati Incorporated.)

**I'll be hosting a conversation with Jean-Pierre Laffont at the Melville Gallery in New York for a book signing on Friday, Oct. 13 as part of The Week Live event series. Click here for more information or to purchase tickets.**