How my impressions about New York changed so far

Wow, very nice Martin. I feel in knowing you, in our conversations and reading things like this posting that you are becoming a New Yorker. Its interesting to hear you and see you embrace the city and all it has to offer. Reading this today makes me a little homesick. Keep up the great work you are doing!!

I am at the beginning of the second half of my stay in New York. Next Monday I am going to have lunch with Magnum's bureau director Mark Lubell to get some feedback about my work. I am planing to work on new stories and enjoy to be back. But you know that already...

So I thought about how my impressions about New York changed since living here. Of course I got to know the city better. People who don’t know New York think of it as being an always busy place. They only think of Manhattan with it’s skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.
If they think of other parts like the Bronx for example they most likely think of drug dealers, murderers and gangs. New York is a dangerous place in a lot of heads. That’s what you learn about New York through movies and shows which take place in New York. So how should one know better?

I am living in the Bronx myself, I am going to different parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Unfortunatly I haven’t been to Staten Island yet. I have seen so called "good neighbourhoods" and so called "bad neighbourhoods" but I have never experienced a situation in which I felt uncomfortable. There have been situations where I put my camera away in my bag because I got the feeling that photographing here wouldn’t be a smart idea but that has in most cases to do with my own insecurities I guess.

So living in New York got me the chance to learn a lot. Not only in terms of photography but also how to approach people. It helped me to get rid of prejudices about New York and the people that live here.

New York is a great place because of its manifoldness and diversity. You meet people from all over the world, from all sorts of cultural background, you get to see so many things and there is something going on all the time. I am into what I am doing so much that I have the feeling to live as rich as I didn’t for quite a while. I am engaged with what I am doing.

And I do also think that running this website helps me to approach life in New York a little differently. This whole project is a good way for me to - without compromises - dedicate myself to photography and my experiences here. There was not even a single day since I came to New York on which I didn’t take care of my weblog.
One of my goals was to post an entry each day without a break while in New York. So I am forced to get out and find new subjects and topics all the time. I am probably a person tending to be lazy sometimes, but I can’t afford to be lazy here. I have to soak everything in while working for Magnum and staying in New York. That’s the reason I came here.

Posted by Martin Fuchs on August 19, 2005 11:44 PM