Although I'm not submitting a full project, a thought about my work:
I am a street photographer. Translation: I am a sneak-thief grabbing small stories one image at a time.
I ply my thievery with a camera on the streets of New York City. It was harmless enough in the beginning. Moving to New York from Memphis may have been a culture shock, but 1970’s New York was also a visual shock. The city was going bankrupt - police and sanitation layoffs, blackouts, rubble, graffiti and burned out buildings - yet the layers of grit gave everything added depth. I loved it immediately. This place seemed to be a forbidden city.
I know I have romanticized this time and place. I sometimes seek out places with that same feel - they are still out there - but I’m not looking to recreate that time. Today’s New York still gives me what I crave when I pick up a camera: the idiosyncratic, the off-kilter , the darkly humorous.
These images tell some of those stories. If you prefer, you can think of them as borrowed - not stolen.
