Over more than twenty years, Gregory Halpern has photographed his hometown of Buffalo, New York, gradually building the body of work that becomes his latest monograph. King, Queen, Knave offers a personal and unconventional vision of the city, one that moves beyond familiar stories of post-industrial decline and instead embraces a more ambiguous, almost surreal sense of reality.

The sequence unfolds like a stage where unpredictable figures appear among empty buildings, snow-covered streets and sun-faded scenes charged with quiet intensity. Each image is closely tied to seasonal conditions, balancing the weight of a long-term project with the immediacy of singular moments.

Through themes of inversion and elevation, Halpern reflects on both his birthplace and contemporary America more broadly, where beauty and decay, hope and despair are constantly intertwined. The result is a lyrical and complex portrait of a place that remains at once intimate and unknowable.