I chose to photograph the different watches New Yorkers wear. The reason I chose this topic is because I am big fan of tem so I thought this was going to be easy. But it wasn’t.
The first issue that I experienced was that it was very hard to go up to people on the street and ask them if you can take a picture of their watch. One man screamed at me, while one lady said “no” because she thought I was going to steal it. The borough that I experienced the most problems would have to be Manhattan. The people were always in a rush. They would ignore you or worse, they would stop, listen to my request and would just keep walking away. That is why I tried to remain in the “suburban” boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.
Even though I found a fpeople from the street, it was still a challenge. I had an issue with a Quartz (battery powered) watch a man was wearing. The watch had a seconds hand. Unlike Automatic timepieces, where the hand sweeps continuously, a battery watch sweeps for one second, then it stops, and then it goes again for the next second. Each time I tried photographing his watch, the seconds hand would cause the entire picture to be blurry because the camera would capture it in motion.
I thought that I could be like Walker Evans and take pictures of people’s watches on the subway or on the bus. Sadly, that didn’t work. On the L train one day, I saw a middle aged man sleeping next to me with a beautiful Bedat & Co (one of the top tier brands) watch. I took out my camera and started focusing on it. From the corner of my eye, I saw everyone on the cart looking at me. I tried to fake it by pretending to look at my gallery. Their eyes were still fixated on me. I realized what was wrong. As I was focusing and zooming in on his watch, my camera lens extended by an inch. I was embarrassed. So much so that when the man woke up, I didn’t even ask him if I could take a picture of his arm.
After the incident, I was pretty depressed. So, I went to get a burger from my local diner. As I was eating the burger, there was an elderly lady sitting in the table left of me. I saw she wearing a watch and asked her if I could take a photo of her hand. She looked at me and said, “This cruddy old thing? Yeah why not?” Relieved that she allowed me to take a photo, I snapped a few pictures of her timepiece and thanked her when I was gone. That episode with the lady gave me an epiphany: Why should I go out to the street and look for people when I can go to a coffee place and wait for people to come?
From that diner, I headed out to Dunkin Donuts where I really understood the theme of my photography. Are watches practical nowadays or is it a fashion piece? One girl in her twenties was wearing a watch with colorful designs resembling almost like a child’s watch. Also, that watch wasn’t even working. She said the only reason she wore it was that it matched her outfit. Another female was wearing a Bvlgari watch. I didn’t know if it was real or not, but I asked her, “What’s the time now?” Instead of looking at her watch, she took out her phone and told me the time. A man saw what I was doing and he showed me his “watch”. He took out his phone and put on his wrist and said, “Here you go. This is my timepiece.” I couldn’t resist. I took the picture. In my opinion, that photo was the worst in terms of quality, but it was the best in terms of impact. The role of watches has changed dramatically in the past twenty years. People back then didn’t have any IPhones so the only way to know the time at an exact moment was by looking at their watches. Now, for most of us, our phones became our watches.
