NEW YORK NEW YORK by Rainer Hosch

Issue 51

When I started this project in 2008 I was not sure what I was looking for, I just felt the urge to capture what was in front of me on a daily basis. I realized quite quickly that while I am drawn to recording the energy of the city, my passion is portraying what the energy does to each person who walks through its streets. It is the people that interest me most, portraits of strangers, fellow travelers, walking, talking, remaining in silence. Often an aloneness within the crowds. I would love to record every single human being I pass. I use a small digital camera, handheld and not hidden, but unobtrusive enough not to attract too much attention. The shutter becomes my personal pause button, freezing the moment, frozen reality so to say.

Street life at the turn of the century has changed a lot. Modern technology and communication have altered the way people move through a metropolis in recent years. Cellphones, texting, iPods and headphones are not only changing the way people communicate or choose not to, in the context of the public domain these things seem to take our attention into the virtual world of the global village or to a soundtrack of our personal journey. My duty is to record, my commitment here is to engage with the real world, time will tell what I really found.

Rainer Hosch is a Los Angeles, CA based photographer
To view more of Rainer's work, please visit his website.