Reinhart Wolf's vision of New York Architecture Photography

NEW YORK Photographs by Reinhart Wolf. Introduction by Edward Albee and Sabina Lietzmann. Architectural Notes by Christopher Gray. Interview of Reinhart Wolf by Andy Warhol. Illustrated. 80 pp. New York: The Vendome Press.

Of all the coffee-table books devoted to photographs of New York City - and quite a few have been published this year -''New York'' has the most coherent photography. It is the product of a single photographer, not a book editor's or art director's compilation; its vision of the city is consistent and unified. There are 30 pictures finely reproduced on pages measuring 16 1/2 by 11 1/2 inches, all of them taking full advantage of the page size (horizontal pictures measure 16 1/2 by 23 inches!) and of the glorious tonalities of color film.

Reinhart Wolf's vision of New York is not that of the man on the street, to be sure. His photographs depict only the tops of Manhattan skyscrapers and apartment buildings, ranging from the venerable Woolworth Building to the gleaming Citicorp Center. His large-format camera reveals a wealth of detail few of us have ever been in a position to see before, unless we have stared, as Wolf did, straight across from neighboring buildings. Despite their attention to atmospheric lighting, the pictures convey an unrelenting air of stolidity and rectitude - a quality that only Andy Warhol, of all the writers engaged in the project, seems to have noticed. ''Reinhart, these buildings make me think of money,'' he says.