NEW YORK SKETCHES

This was my first time visiting New York. I had just one week to see, feel, and take it all in. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like capturing the city with my camera — I just wanted to soak it up and observe. I flew in early in the morning from Las Vegas, and took a train to Manhattan where my hotel was. I remember the overwhelming scale that hit me as soon as I emerged from the subway at the intersection of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. It was dizzying!

The whole time I was in New York, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I already knew this city. It felt much closer, more familiar, than it seemed when it was just a distant dream. I kept wondering, whose New York would I see: Elliott Erwitt’s, Saul Leiter’s, Rebecca Lepkoff’s, Ernst Haas’s, Joel Meyerowitz’s? But of course, I found my own New York. I know that many people feel lonely in this city, but at the same time, you never really feel like an outsider. You immediately become part of it, a stroke in its vibrant, colorful canvas, fitting in as if you’d always been the missing piece.

All of my shots from New York aren’t part of any project or series; they’re more like fleeting sketches from someone who, on their way home from a distant continent, found themselves in a city-port between America and Europe. My camera eagerly captured the noise, contrasts, colors, air, and character of this city that felt both close and far at the same time.