Renee Cho Yeon Kim/ New York, Stop.
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As a New Yorker, my typical day starts with an obnoxiously loud alarm. I wave my heavy arms to spot and turn it off without an attempt to open my eyes. I get out of my bed, take a quick shower, and finally check the time. I realize that I have a little more time to fetch a bagel from a café nearby my school. My mind gets busy. I dress myself up in whatever comes into my mind from the closet. I put on my shoes and stuff everything I see on the desk into my school bag. During those thirty minutes, I never stop to look back or think what I am doing. Officially, my unstoppable day as a New Yorker begins as I am merged into the street filled with other hundreds of New Yorkers who open their days just like I do.
For some reason, we, the New Yorkers, are living a day that is broken down into seconds. We do not hesitate to cross the street illegally, even in front of the cops who are staring at us, if we can save five more seconds of our day. Just to save five seconds to be in class earlier, ten more seconds to meet my friends, and thirty more seconds to get out early from school, or to do whatever else, I run all day long. Obviously, I’m not alone in following this draining pattern of life. New Yorkers do not bother themselves to see each other on the street and make eye contact. They do not have enough time to say “Hello” or “Good morning” to some strangers on the street with a smile. Simply, we do not stop.
When I first was assigned to do the Street photography project from IDC class, I wanted to find something philosophical through my camera lens. For a long time, that moment of inspiration did not come to me. One day, I was waiting for a street sign to change at Times Square. My mind went entirely blank from daydreaming, and I did not realize that the sign has changed. When I finally retrieved my consciousness, I was in the middle of a giant flow of New Yorkers. Suddenly, this odd feeling touched my mind. Why do we never pause and see what other people are doing? Why are we always so busy and full of ourselves? I decided to capture the moments when New Yorkers are “forced” to stop in their days. I went around the city capturing people waiting for their buses at the bus stops or for crossing signs to change, and empty stores filled with darkness. Also, I took photos of New Yorkers busying themselves to surpass others.
In order to depict the “crazy business” of the city life, I decided to go to take photos at Times Square. It was an excellent choice, since that was the busiest and the most crowded place in Manhattan. I didn’t have any trouble spotting interesting subjects for my photography. However, the biggest challenge came from the technical limitation of my camera. I used a plain digital camera, which automatically did the focusing for me. Oftentimes, it wouldn’t let me adjust the focus for the angle that I wanted. It automatically cleared out the parts that I wanted it to make blurry. Otherwise, I played around with the shutter speed and light exposure values to have a dreamy, yet dynamic atmosphere in my photos. I decided to take photos at night so that I could play around with the light. I was generally satisfied with the photos, but some of the color schemes turned out to be little darker than what I expected.
The most interesting part of my project was that I was able to live different from the crowd for those short moments. I stopped when everyone moved around. I moved when everyone stopped. Through my lens, I could find hidden meanings of so many little things that we disregard each day. It was the significance of recovering our composure in our busy lives. In order to keep ourselves conscious of changes, we should be conscious of our surroundings first. This is the new definition of the city life that I could derive from my photography project.
