I'm trying to see their world.
Which means standing where they stand.

I told the cab "Broadway and Great Jones." I was sixteen. It was my first time in New York. I remember standing outside Tower Records that afternoon and looking down Broadway. I felt incredibly free and inspired. I thought it would fade away. It never did.

Twenty-five years have gone by, and every glance I throw at this city magically feels brand new.

"Making It…" is a tale of 24 hours in New York.

Between 2017 and 2020, I captured the subtle ballet of crowds at different times of the day. At dawn, some were heading to school or the office, others home from a long night out. Later in the morning, you'd see a doorman catching some winter sun, a headless Mickey Mouse in a Times Square back alley, and with luck, you could stumble upon a group of nuns zebra crossing like the Beatles on Abbey Road. Some shots would make me smile, some would move me profoundly.

Mostly taken from the back, these pictures convey the grind and the doubts that make this city race around the clock, in hopes of Making It…

This is a series about the way bodies use this city. Skateboards and brooms and basketballs and Citibikes. The yogis in Grand Central under a chandelier that has seen everything. The kid with the Mbappe 10 walking south toward the Empire State. The waiter taking his cigarette like a sport.

I started it in 2016, on the way to other things. For four years, every time the city did something with its body, I tried to be there for it.

And then in spring 2020, the city emptied.

The second half is what was left. Masks on the basketball court, running in the rain, kids walking to Pier 26 like they had inherited it. The athletes who stayed are a different story.

New York is a city that keeps its studios in plain sight. The trumpet at the Rose Bar, the violinist on the Soho sidewalk during lockdown, the mascot stripping out of his Mickey on Sixth Avenue, the cellist who has left the case taped at the seams outside her stoop.

This is the rest of the series — the artists, in all the kinds of work the city pays them to do, and a few it doesn't.

"The art is never the destination. The art is on the way to wherever else."

Mostly from the back, as always. Mostly walking. Sometimes the artist has already gone and only the instrument is left.

There is a version of New York that only exists after nine o'clock. Bars with too many bottles. The marble lobby of a building you cannot afford to live in. The trumpet at the Rose Baryle, the bassist at Birdland, the bartenders at the Dead Rabbit shaking three drinks at once and trying not to look at the ceiling.

And then outside: the wet street, the lit window, the woman in heels at the 28th Street station, the man on the corner of Prince at one a.m., waiting for whoever it is.

"This is the city that doesn't go home."

The series ends in April and May of 2020, with the rooms still lit and nobody in them. Empty bars, empty crosswalks, the lights left on for whoever comes back first.

Love is the most often-photographed thing in this city and the hardest to actually photograph. It happens on benches, on platforms, behind windows. It is sometimes a couple and sometimes a man on a Sunday morning carrying a wrapped bouquet to whoever is at the other end of the block.

"Mostly, love in New York looks like waiting for somebody."

Fourteen frames, made between 2017 and 2020. Three kinds of love — the obvious one, the props of it, and the quieter ones that don't make it onto postcards.

A whole second city walks at knee height. Two Afghans on a Sunday Starbucks run. A bulldog skateboarding through Washington Square. A pug in argyle squaring up to two old men on a bench. A studded doodle watching the West 4th game like he's been called off the bench himself.

"The dogs are not extras in this city. They are a parallel cast."

Eleven frames, made between August 2019 and April 2020. Three chapters — the daily walk, the bigger gestures, the ones who clearly own the block. The cats are coming.

This city is mostly photographed from the back. The good frame is the one where the subject has just stopped looking at the camera and started looking at the rest of their life. A man in a PARIS sweatshirt on Sullivan Street in the rain. Three nuns crossing East 66th like the Beatles. A woman in a long white dress at Lafayette and East 4th. The bowler hat in Washington Square that thinks it's still 1898.

"The city is mostly photographed from the back."

Forty-two frames, made between May 2018 and August 2020. Three chapters — strangers in motion, the city's eccentrics found mid-block, and the ones who have stopped for a moment. A dozen of these are from April and May 2020, on streets that had hardly anyone on them at all.

The city forms the kids who grow up in it. They learn it from their parents' shoulders, from the subway floor, from sequined backpacks crossing Washington Place at seven in the morning. By the time they're scootering across Thompson Street, the city is theirs.

"By the time they're scootering across Thompson, the city is theirs."

Fifteen frames, made between June 2018 and April 2020. Three chapters — being walked through it, being inside their own world inside of it, and — when the grown-ups all stayed home in spring 2020 — running it.

An hôtel particulier on rue du Sentier, in the second arrondissement. Photographed in early 2011, during the renovation — between the moment the old life had been removed and the moment the new one was put in. (The building later opened as the Hoxton Paris.)

"The building, with its skin off."

Four chapters — the bones, the stairs, the iron, the skin. The only project on this site where the subject doesn't have a back to turn.

Exhibited at

Twenty-two frames made in Jerusalem, on film, in 2008. The original prints were enlarged by hand on Ilford baryté and selenium-toned.

"The light, on the wall."

Three chapters — at the Wall, through the Old City, around the city.

Exhibited at