Jean Bizien landed in the United States in 1946, a very young man, and discovered the country through a single city: New York, a city made of hundreds of other cities, thousands of villages from Ireland, Italy, Russia, China, Mali, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil; millions of men, thousands of habits, festivals and languages, hundreds of skin colours, and a single language in which to speak together. New York is a miracle, dark and joyful. The people Bizien photographed are villagers in a city of immense buildings: they take their time, spread their newspapers under them and watch life move, play draughts in thick woollen overcoats, sleep in the street in the afternoon, sometimes out of misery. The city is familiar, hard and gentle, becoming by turns a Mediterranean city, a cold, snowy city, a city of pleasure and festivity, of children, of lonely men who shield themselves from tears with newspapers or hands closed over their faces. His camera is like a bottle of wine that has imprisoned the flavours and bitterness, the images and impulses of an era, and he has recently uncorked the stopper of time. Extract from the text by Olivier Couqueberg.