Mario Bucovich’s photobook begins with a short introduction where he describes his feelings of ambivalence towards the city, contextualising New York’s emigration history. Through these feelings and his experiences in the metropolis, he tries to pin down the fascination of New York: “It’s not only the greatest city in the world, but also the only modern city built from entirely new conceptions. Besides being an expression of a new architectural art and a new theory of city planning, it is a reflection of new beliefs and a new philosophy. The collective will, in the short span of three centuries, has erected the most fabulous city known to man. Our few records on Babylon give only an obscure vision of that city.” (Bucovich 1937) He continues, describing the new-erected skyscrapers as the “tremendous force of a new and daring dream; of a granite-hard human will seeking new forms of expression; of perfect technical skill previously unknown and of unlimited means, prodigally placed at the disposal of new visions of men” (Bucovich 1937, 2).

In its 85 photographs by Bucovich and eight by Josef Rudzicka, the photobook can be read as a journey through New York, focusing on the streets, the skyscrapers and other buildings of the city. It begins with a foggy water view – probably taken in the morning – with a wooden pillar in the foreground and a steamer on the horizon. With the caption Off Manhattan, the first image not only represents the start of the day, but also provides an entry point for the virtual city tour in the following pages. The second image continues with a sunrise skyline view of Lower Manhattan captured from the Standish Arms Hotel in Brooklyn. After several pages it becomes clear, that the fascination articulated in the introduction is also visible in the images.

Analysing the photographs and locating where they were taken on a map – although the first images are located in the south of Manhattan and follow with hints to the east and west, towards the north of Manhattan – it becomes apparent that the photographs do not really follow a geographical route and narrative through New York. Bucovich works with matching pairs of similarly themed geographical and visual motifs, as for example the central stations (Bucovich 1937, 46–47) or the grids of the Brooklyn Bridge (Bucovich 1937, 28–29). Often the photographs were taken from elevated positions, demonstrating that Bucovich had access to the higher floors and rooftop terraces of buildings and hotels. The elevated perspective creates a wider spatial view overlooking the buildings and streets, emphasising the proportions of architecture and people. The elevated location of the photographer is frequently mentioned in the captions; Looking from the 17th floor of the Irving Tower at No. 1 Wall Street. In the center is the Singer Building, forty-five stories high, and in 1910 the highest tower in Manhattan (Bucovich 1937, 30). In most cases, the caption contains exact details of where and in which direction the photograph was taken and which buildings can be seen. Besides dates and historical information, the buildings are often described in such superlative terms as "highest", "oldest", "first" or as being the world’s largest or tallest. Thus, the photobook reads like a city guidebook to the superlative buildings of New York, focusing on skyscrapers, historical houses, theatres, hotels, libraries and the urban infrastructure of the metropolis, where people do not appear in individual portraits, but in clusters and groups as inhabitants of the streets, their size in stark contrast to that of the skyscrapers.

The photographs include day and night shots and are technically accurate and straightforward images. Bucovich plays with light and shadow, creating in some examples well-arranged light-dark contrasts. This can be seen, for example, in his photograph of the City Hall columns (Bucovich 1937, 32) taken in sunshine so that their shadows on the tiles show up in steep perspectives and in the fallen line with the building, or in another photograph (Bucovich 1937, 18) the shadow cast by a skyscraper directly on the City Service Building. The aesthetic of the images owes much to the stylistic practices of the New Vision of the 1920s in Germany, where Bucovich lived and worked as a photographer before his emigration to Spain and London during the 1930s. The progressive character of the images is reflected in the layout and format of the book. The layout is well arranged and all images are positioned in portrait format in a minimalist and straight-line arrangement. Each photo is aligned with either the upper or lower edge of the page and flush with the outer edge, with a short caption either above or below the picture. With its 23x30 cm (9x12 inch) format, spiral binding and soft cover, the book is both light and a handy size and reminds with the binding on a notebook or calendar. This formal and modern design can also be found in other photobooks of the time; it was used by the French publishing house Art et Métiers Graphiques, for example, for Brassaï’s Paris de nuit (Art et Métiers Graphiques, 1932) and the special issue Photographie 1930.

When Mario Bucovich arrived as an émigré in 1935 in New York, the city was not new to him as he had already lived there with his wife Marie Bucovich, employed as an engineer at the Otis Elevator Company from 1909 to 1910. When he returned in 1935, the city was completely transformed, with buildings like the Woolworth Building (1913), 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building (1930) and the Empire State Building (1931). Furthermore, Bucovich’s photobook on New York was not the first he had published, so he had experience of this art medium and printed format. In 1928 two photobooks in the Das Gesicht der Städte series were edited with photographs by Mario Bucovich: Berlin 1928 (Albertus, 1928) with a foreword by Alfred Döblin, and Paris (Albertus, 1928), with a foreword by Paul Morand and in which several images by the photographer Florence Henri were also reproduced. In 1935 he published the book Photographs. 100 Selected Prints (Hamilton Studies, 1935) which consists of a volume presenting a cross-section of his photographic work to date: cityscapes and landscapes from his Berlin years and his time in Spain, older portraits and recent photographs of members of the London upper class, which together reveal a certain objectification of his style.

Before publishing Magic Manhattan during his exile in New York, Bucovich created Washington D.C. (M.B. Publishing Company, 1936) using a similar structure and spiral binding to the New York photobook. These two books were self-published by Mario Bucovich at his "M.B. Publishing Company” located at 12 East 41st Street and in close proximity to other publishers, magazines and photographic agencies, such as Black Star, PIX, Oceana Publications, Leco and many more in Midtown Manhattan. The cover price was $2, which compared well with other photobooks on the market, such as Fred Stein’s 5th Avenue, which sold for $4, and Chinatown U.S.A. by Elizabeth Coleman, which sold for $3.50. In 1936, the average monthly rent for an apartment in Midtown Manhattan was around $30 to $40 (Times Union, 10 October 1936). Bucovich’s two photobooks followed a well-balanced conceptual and aesthetic, as well economic, design, with the aim of making the volumes available to a broad public through a large print run and an attractive cover price.

Mario Bucovich's photobooks reflect his peripatetic life and his intellectual network in Europe and America, concluding with his Oaxaca. Mexico photobook in 1942. He emigrated to Mexico in 1939. All his photobooks have in common that he renders each city as itself with its own specific architecture and urban history, personalising the buildings as its giant, iconic inhabitants, an approach that resonates with the architectural and urban city planning discussion of the 1930s. Magic Manhattan ends with an image of Broadway in north Manhattan, the iconic skyline taken from Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty.