NEW YORK - From a pier at Gantry State Park in Long Island City, you can see a tiny island, just south of Roosevelt Island. It's called U Thant or Belmont Island, created from fill from the construction of an East River subway tunnel. It's one of the many islands located in New York Harbor. They are the subject of a photo essay in this week's New York Magazine.

Photography Director Jody Quon says Editor in Chief David Haskell suggested the idea.  

"I thought okay, this is very exciting, but also very challenging, because many of the islands might seem very similar," Quon said.

There are around 30 islands in the harbor. Manhattan, of course, and Staten Island, and Governors Island. And the smaller specks of land that are not so well known, but played a role in the city's history.  

The magazine hired Photographer Jeff Chen Sing Liao for the project. Then they had to figure out the logistics. 

"Many of them are only accessible by boat. Many of them civillans are not even allowed to enter. So it was a matter of speaking to the Parks Department and speaking to people with boats that we could charter for the day," Quon said.

Liao used boats, kayaks, and state of the art drones to get these shots of Roosevelt Island and Hart Island, host to the city's potter's field where more than a million poor and disenfranchised people are buried. 

There's Swinburne Island, once a place where immigrants with contagious diseases were quarantined. And Liberty Island, home to that famous statue, though Liao chose a different perspective on it. His photos are accompanied by an essay by Robert Sullivan recounting the histories of the islands.

Quon hopes readers will enjoy this journey to places that are very close, but in some ways so far lacking easy access.  

"I hope that people will start paying more attention to them and maybe we can start a movement where we can start utilizing these islands more than we have," Quon added.

There is a proposal to provide more access to Hart Island off the coast of City Island. It would allow the Parks Department to take over jurisdiction from the department of corrections and perhaps provide ferry service to give more public access.