General Entry - Emerging Talent Awards

When I was traveling from Rio to New York on december of 2013 I knew I wanted to photograph the streets, not only the chaos and the excess of information of day-time, I was curious to find out if the city calms down overnight. I had the image of Edward Hopper's Nighthawk in my head, and I think, unconsciously, I wanted to look for the night-time effects of manmade lights, the angles and that dull feeling of Hopper's panting. The idea was to get emptiness and in the most popular places and avenues of the city. To get that, I had to find a gap in time where it has almost none people in the streets. I usually walked after midnight during 4-5 hours, about 10 miles every night at least a day a week and at nights of temperature -20ºC. The best hours to get the city "sleeping" was between 2-4am and usually on sunday to wednesday. The strong winter of 2013 helped me to get no people on the streets, but not the absence of cars. In some places I had to wait hours until reduce the number of cabs and trucks that circulates on that time, in other places I chose to include the car in the photo because I thought it was part of the cityscape. In a few pictures you can see a human figure, but they are almost like undeads, walking in the night with no reason. Fact that somehow may be related to my personal experience of walking alone in New York at dawn. It's amusing to compare the movement of people on all those expensive stores that are popular with tourists during the day, but completely dead and empty overnight. Unintentionally, I mock capitalism. The city at night is even more beautiful. It has silence and space. Most visitor don't get this experience, they are too busy shopping during the day, or they are too afraid to walk in the dawn. In this body of work I invite people to take a walk, in the cold night of a winter, when the city sleeps.