New York is one of the most diverse and striking places out there. From its urban streets, to townhouses, to the beautiful lights of Times Square, New York is a center for artistic exploration and individualism.
Jill Freedman is a photographer who immersed herself in this cultural city. Capturing only the small and hidden gems of New York that represented what it held. In John Leland’s article, For a Street Photographer, ‘The Weirder, the Better’, he shows us her image of New York.
Ms. Freedman worked behind her lenses from the mid 1960s until the late 1980s, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Using only black and white, Freedman’s photography aimed to “avoid cloaking it under a veil of pretty.” She captured what others avoided, the cold, hard, truth of New York. What made it special, the small things and also the gruesome truths that existed.
As Leland quotes, she sought, “beggars, panhandlers, people sleeping on the street,” the police and the firefighters, the people washed ashore by forces bigger than themselves. “It’s the theater of the streets,” she said. “The weirder, the better.” 
But that was then. After she returned to New York in the 2000s, it was not the same city. What Freedman sought to capture, to explore, and to expose was instead replaced and hidden even deeper. The culture that she knew, the “disintegration that had seemed permanent” had disappeared and was replaced “by an order that felt even more insubstantial.”
Leland’s article brings up the dark truth about our culture. With innovation and movement, the treasures of our city, the hidden society of our streets, are disappearing. He uses the perspective of a photographer who lived through her lenses. Who photographed what she saw on streets, what New York was really about, not the one shown through glamorous pictures for advertisement and to attract tourist. An invisible community that lived within a bigger one.
It’s hard to believe how different everything had become. That if you step back and think, the New York of then, has been lost, pushed back into a corner and concealed. Leland’s article, made me realize that instead of just looking at the bigger picture, the small details also matter. That although innovation and advancement is important, we cannot forget the foundation of our city. What New York really is made of. The weird, yet normal things that occur. The small things that make life interesting.
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