Wen Bo Xie/Alleys

[photosmash=]

New York City is known for its majestic skyscrapers and architecturally brilliant buildings. One can basically wander into any Manhattan neighborhood and witness a beautifully designed building. As urban developers attempt to construct these wonders, they usually fail to incorporate alleys. They mistakenly believe that alleys are an “elite waste” of space, which could otherwise be used to increase the square area of the building. However, alleys are not only part of the city’s history, but also they are symbols of the lost culture. Alleys are a place where a group of individuals can exchange information. In addition, people are able to commit crimes, such as selling and buying illegal items or simply attacking and murdering other individuals. Without such places, New York City would not have the same atmosphere. As modernization tightens its grip on the city, alleys are diminishing all around due to the lack of appreciation for their historical value.

Alleys are of great interest to me due to their functionality. Over the summer I was working this job that required me to be outside for hours at a time. It was quite difficult to find a place to use the bathroom; instead I looked for the nearest alley in order to relieve myself. Throughout the whole entire summer, I would always end up in a strange section of New York. As a result, my daily assignment became looking for an alley so that I may relieve myself. As the days went by, I paid more and more attention to the detail and the size of each alley. As my fascination grew, I found myself using the bathroom more often mainly as an excuse to take a break from my job to observe the interesting aspects of each alley.

When the street photography project was assigned, I knew that I wanted to display the beauty of alleys in New York City. I proceeded to East Village and Greenwich Village to capture the essence of alleys and their importance to the splendor of these distinct neighborhoods. During the whole process, I was heavily influenced by Berenice Abbott’s style of shooting photography. Thus, I proceeded to take photographs with a focal point somewhere off in the distance, while using walls and gates as a guide. To my amazement, it wasn’t difficult finding the perfect alleys I wanted to capture. Instead, the hard part was actually taking the photograph, as people didn’t want me to document the alleys. Whenever someone told me to go away, I would stay just a moment longer in the hopes that I would be able to photograph that particular alley. I truly felt like a photographer when I repeatedly disregarded the warnings of those individuals who told me to go away.

As a warning, not all of my photographs are of the traditional alleys. I interpreted alley as a narrow passageway between walls, gates, or fences. For this project, I only had a 5-megapixel-camera phone at my disposal, so when I had taken all the photographs I went back and edited most of them to get the best results. During the editing process, I played around with the exposure and contrast levels to achieve the perfect lighting and details for the photograph. Even though I didn’t want them to be edited, I found it necessary because of the poor lighting of the raw photographs.