There are two kinds of collections that evolve in a photographer’s work.
There is encapsulated work, which is work with finite, graspable boundaries. For example, I’ve been to Haiti, twice. I’ve been to Iran once, and to Jamaica three times–you get the idea. It’s not a continuing thread in my life’s work, simply a brief recording of a visit.
And then there is unencapsulated work. (By the way, I apologize for the long words. If I could think of something shorter I’d have used it.)
I am referring to work that is a continuous thread throughout one’s life.
In my obsessive way I like to label things in their own little, neat categories. There’s “NY Street” which I started on day one. There is BV, or Bank View, which went on for fifty years and became so unwieldy that I had to further subdivide it: just plain Bank View, never realizing that it would morph into BV Interiors, BV Birds, BV Ice Crystals, BV Itself, etc.
This particular collection is one in which I found myself shooting not the view of the city, the weather, or the light, but the people available to me from my home. The construction workers, the strollers, the sleepers, the children, the hookers, the ever-changing cast of characters that were available from my perch.
