Awakenings

Being New Yorkers, we have become accustomed to many things; namely, irritable taxi drivers, a MacDonald’s/Starbucks on every corner, the occasional homeless dozing off on a park bench, etc. In light of this, I pondered for days and days trying to hatch a unique, original idea. One morning, I set out on an epic journey all around New York City accompanied by my trusty camera and a mind full of plethoric ideas. The only problem, there was no aim; I was searching for an inspiration. But then it dawned on me. While walking passing a Starbucks with a friend, she jokingly exclaimed “DUDE! You seriously can’t walk a single block without seeing a Starbucks! (Laughs) You want some coffee?” At that moment, I had been enlightened; I had finally found my sense of inspiration.
Being that I take the subway and other forms of mass transit every morning, I noticed that many people absolutely need a cup of coffee or tea, in order to function properly for the rest of the day. It is, as many call it, a pick me up. Therefore, I attempted to portray the issue at hand, through photographing places and people seemingly everywhere and anywhere, that pertained to the concept of coffee. In a sense, it seems evident that New York runs on caffeine. However, the most amazing discovery that I made during the course of garnering this compilation was that, coffee (cups) can be found virtually anywhere you look.
However, there laid an obstacle in completing this mission; how does one go about describing and portraying this point through pictures? Quite simply, I attempted to capture various moments in a single day, where I observed coffee being consumed, brought, or just laying around unattended. The most interesting moments overall, were in witnessing that coffee cups would erratically unveil themselves. Whether squirrels on the lawn of a city park chewed them up, they are bundled up nicely in a trashcan, or sitting around long lost and forgotten about, they were literally everywhere. Furthermore, an overpowering theme that continually echoed in the background of the entire project, was the question of whether coffee was a necessity or an obsession.
For my compilation, I created two sub-themes to accompany my overall vision of coffee. The first sub-topic introduced is titled “New York Runs on Caffeine,” partially being a spoof of Dunkin Donuts’ renowned slogan, “American Runs on Dunkin.” For this section, I focused on cups of coffee that were found in plain sight, but tend to be overlooked. I focused on the morning rush – rush hour – and aimed to show the presence of coffee in our everyday lives; whether it is being consumed or littered around the city. In order to do this, I traveled around to places like South Street Seaport, the Staten Island Ferry, Chinatown, and the Baruch campus, and captured images of people going about their daily lives. The message, simply that coffee seems more vital to people than anything else.
My second sub-topic was capturing the influence and popularity of Starbucks. Therefore, I named this section “Starbucks Nation,” in respect to the popular documentary, “Fast Food Nation.” Noticeably, this section deals with Starbucks and its seemingly never-ending reach into the hearts of the many coffee lovers. For instance, whenever I ask my friends if they want coffee, the majority of the time they will respond with, “sure lets go get Starbucks!” Given this theory, I was spurred to illustrate the presence of Starbucks almost, if not, everywhere. Coincidentally, I was fortunate enough to capture an image of a homeless man, whom – of all things – still managed to have a cup of Starbucks coffee with him.
Due to the inevitability of fate, there were many obstacles that perpetually manifested themselves throughout the entire process of compiling the pictures necessary for the project. First and foremost, my personal fear of confrontation, lead me to refrain from taking too many close up pictures of people; therefore, many of my images seemed to lack the effect and power that was originally intended. Additionally, the first day I spent taking photos, I was without a theme, and therefore ended up taking countless pictures that ended up being irrelevant – to say the least. Moreover, that very day, I was only able to take very limited pictures, for I was utilizing a digital camera and trust me, the makers of those cameras didn’t expect a person to use it to take 200+ pictures in one day – short and simple, the batteries depleted really quickly. But the most prominent issue of all, was to find pictures that would stand out above all, and be unique. Ultimately, I guess the challenges all revolved around a time limitation. Usually, professionals would spend years garnering their works, however, we only had a matter of weeks to scrounge up the materials needed for the project.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 12:40 am and is filed under