These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you, let’s hear it for New York

I have just been on a six day trip to New York City with my University class, staying in a  hotel just around the corner from the Empire State Building. Throughout our stay we vivsited the International Centre of Photography and saw the prints of the lost negatives of Robert Capa. We had a talk by the Hans Neelaman, the founder and owner of the stock images company WIN (Worldwide Image Navigation), a stock company that uses very artistic imagery and tries to push away from formulaic stock photography.  

We looked around several galleries including the Aperture gallery and the Museum of Modern art (MoMa), I made a note of artists and photographers who I found inspirational and whom I want to look into more. At MoMA we went to an exhibition titled “Pictures by Women: A History Of Modern Photography”, gender studies is something which greatly interests me and so I was keen to really take in everything that I could from it. The collection included works by the likes of Imogen Cunnigham, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Barbra Kruger and Maya Deren. 

An exhibition that I particularly liked was in MoMa PS1 (over in Brooklyn), it was titled The Talent Show and was based on the theme of everyone having their 15 minutes of fame. It examined the relationships between audience, artist and the participants that model, it had some really intriguing pieces that the audience could not only view but participate with and engage in, really pushing home the whole idea of everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame.

“In recent years, television's reality shows and talent competitions have offered people a conflicted chance at fame, while various kinds of Web-based social media have pioneered new forms of communication that people increasingly use to perform their private lives as public theater. During the same period, governments worldwide have asserted vast new powers of surveillance, placing unwitting "participants" on an entirely different kind of stage.” - MoMA PS1

An artist whose work caught my eye in this exhibition was Shizuka Yokomizo. For her series Stranger she would send an anonymous letter to different houses asking them to stand in front of their window with the lights on at a specific date and time. The photographer wuld then set up her tripod outside this window, expose the film and leave. The pictures would be taken at night time and so the subjects would not have been able to see the photographer, only her silhouette. I like how she frames her images to include the subject's surroundings, the curtains, window frame, personal belongings and household items, it helps to emphasise that feeling of voyeurism and puts further distance between the observer and the observed.

There was lots of inspiration in New York, for me this was mainly in the less “touristy” areas, Williamsburg in Brooklyn was full of old fashioned red brick buildings, 1950’s style diners, thrift stores full of beaten up treasures, graffiti art sprayed on the side of buildings, just real New Yorker’s living away from the bright lights of Manhattan and Times Square. However, New York didn’t do as much for me as I thought it would. It is a city that you see so often in movies and TV shows, you almost feel like you know it before you have even arrived. But like with most things, the reality never quite lives up to the hype. New York was fun, I’m glad for the experience and the knowledge and inspiration gained from the galleries and talks we were given, but I'm afraid it just wasn't for me, I guess I'm really just a London girl at heart.