Pilgrimage

New York­ers enjoy the weather in the Brook­lyn Bridge Park

I don’t remem­ber how, exactly, I came upon it, but I dis­cov­ered that New York’s Museum of Mod­ern Art was hold­ing a ret­ro­spec­tive exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work, span­ning the whole of his career.  I knew I had to go, and had to find a way to do it.  I wouldn’t say that Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of my favorite, or even one of my biggest influ­ences, but I couldn’t pass up a photo-centric pil­grim­age to New York to see a huge col­lec­tion of pho­tos by one of the most impor­tant pho­tog­ra­phers in history.

It seemed fit­ting to me to go to New York, and try to see it and shoot it in a dif­fer­ent way, as he had shot in Paris.  My goal was not to emu­late Cartier-Bresson, exactly, but to take the time to wan­der the city and really see its rich­ness.  One thing that I def­i­nitely do take from Cartier-Bresson is a focus on the ordinary–I like to find every­day things and ele­vate them, to show the lit­tle moments that make up our lives.  So I went to the famous places that I hadn’t vis­ited before, and instead of focus­ing on the famous places, I tried to focus on the peo­ple in and around the famous places, and how they inter­acted with the city.

In a lot of ways, I was way out of my com­fort zone–not exactly shoot­ing from the hip, but shoot­ing moments as they hap­pened, try­ing to be ready with the cam­era, pull it up, focus, com­pose, take a photo.  I took a min­i­mal kit that is not my most famil­iar, and shot in ways I don’t nor­mally shoot.  The expe­ri­ence was free­ing and fun, and reminds me of the rev­e­la­tions about my own home­town when I took the time to see it through the viewfinder, to explore it and see it in a new, fresh way.

The won­der­ful and annoy­ing thing about New York City is that there is just so much–it’s sen­sory over­load.  It’s very dif­fi­cult to fil­ter, to make sense of the sen­sory cacoph­ony.  On the flip side, some­times I felt I could point the cam­era any­where and find some­thing new, inter­est­ing, and worthwhile.

Man­hat­tan, as seen from the Brook­lyn Bridge

Walk­ing around, see­ing the thou­sands of people–tourists, locals, visitors–and the thou­sands of cam­eras and the thou­sands of images being made all around me, I couldn’t help but think that noth­ing is orig­i­nal, that I couldn’t–and can’t–hope to cap­ture some­thing unique, some­thing spe­cial about this city.  And if that’s so, I’m okay with it, because I think this trip was impor­tant, and the images I’ve brought back with me have mean­ing, even if only to me.

Thanks for tak­ing the time to look at them, and to read this blog.