1234NYC A ten year project following the lives of New Yorkers.
I have never loved or cared about a city as much as I have New York, New York. The people I have met, worked with, loved, despised, fought, and walked across the bridges with, are as precious to me as my own heart. Without New York and the people I know I would have never been challenged in my profession/my life the way I needed to be. The City helped me realize my potential by making me work with people who were far better than me and by forcing me to make heart-thumping decisions in the worst of situations.
New York, by it's nature, has been changing; the past ten years the transformation was sensed but not seen. But the past 5 years have been an accelerated shift of not only gentrification but of ideology. My neighborhood on 1st Street has traded it's businesses and it's inhabitants for generic suits who want to be part of the “scene”. Little did they know that their arrival killed any scene, the energy they sought was a natural urban force sourced by artists, electrified by strong communities; not trendy hookah bars or velvet ropes catered for urban/suburban trogs. Many of my friends; musicians, photographers, painters, small business owners were forced to leave our little communities buried within Manhattan. Let's face it, the city has lost it's verve.
1234NYC is a ten year photography project that focuses on friends and acquaintances of mine who are small business owners, students, and the miscellany of the creative blood that infuses NYC with it's much ballyhooed “epicenter” of artistry. This is a project that is as much about people who (often times forced to) leave NYC as much as it is about people who live in NYC.
1. The project begins in September of 2007 and I will spend a year talking to and photographing people I know who live, go to school or work in Manhattan. (1) 2. The project will continue it's second stage after September of 2009 to September of 2010. (+2) 3. The project will continue it's third stage after September of 2012 to September of 2013. (+3) 4. The project will end in it's fourth stage by wrapping up with all current and former members of the project by photographing them after September of 2016 to September of 2017. (+4)
To summarize, 4 photographs over a 10 year period. If my friends/acquaintances decide to leave NYC then they are out of the book for that period of time. If my friends return to NYC at a later date they may re-enter the book at that time.
I do not want to relive the past, that would kill me, but I do want to do what I should have done many years ago: photograph all the New Yorkers who have helped shape my life to a better place.
I love you all.
Farhad J Parsa. October, 2007
To view the 1234NYC .mac photo archive click here.
