Pictures of the week: NYC SPF by Ashley Gilbertson

Fire escapes, pavements, benches: starved of back gardens and good local parks, New Yorkers will sunbathe anywhere. Photographer Ashley Gilbertson captured them this summer, squeezed into unlikely spots, or lying prone on concrete and handkerchief-sized patches of grass in the shadows of skyscrapers.→ Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

In a city whose inhabitants are so infamously pushed for time, it’s easier, it seems, to drag a duvet and some cushions out on to your Greenwich Village fire escape than haul yourself uptown to Central Park. It may be uncomfortable but, away from the hordes, it looks rather peaceful. → Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

These photographs were taken in July, just days before New York’s 100-degree temperatures gave way to a dramatic storm that ripped through Manhattan, with giant hailstones and skies straight out of a disaster movie. → Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

For some New Yorkers, even sunbathing can be a chance to make a statement. A group of women caused a minor hoo-ha in June when they decided to form a topless sunbathing book club. Putting to the test a state law that says women can go bare-chested anywhere a man can, they held their meetings in Central Park, hotel rooftops, even on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. → Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

Gilbertson is best known as a war photographer, working mostly in Iraq. He has documented the empty bedrooms of deceased soldiers, war “dress rehearsals” for trainees at a military base in Louisiana, and the impact of the suicide of a young Iraqi veteran, Noah Pierce. → Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

But home is New York and whenever he returns, he photographs his city. It’s therapeutic, he once said: a way of reminding himself why he became a photographer in the first place. Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

Sean Lincoln sunbathes on his rooftop, overlooking the Red Hook Housing Projects in Red Hook, an industrial area of Brooklyn, New York, July 22, 2013. Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII

A man sunbathes on a football field between the East River and the East Village, New York, July 22, 2013. Photograph: Ashley Gilbertson/VII