http://gallery.me.com/fjpa..rsa#1002091234NYC. 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; ten years ago 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 timesforced 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 don’t want to relive the past, that’s why I have a camera and a pen,
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.
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Afterword:Today it is January 2009. The economic disaster our country is in_is
mind-boggling. At least the days of the big white crooked shotgun
bearing penguins like Cheney’s ilk have been pushed out and Barack
Obama, starting tomorrow, brings us a hope for a better world. The past
year, as I was wrapping up the first stretch of the 1234NYC project,
things have gone from hero to zero. The other photographers, stylists,
make-up, photo editors I know for the most part have been screaming
“abandon ship motherfuc!!!s!!”, and they, or course, are not the only
ones.
I started the project with the sense of catching the last of my friends
before they were forced out of a city that was too expensive and a
suburban energy that had displaced it. Now I find the factors, still
under the context of money, have now taken a different twist. New York
City may find itself under an exodus of it’s most creative and
entrepreneurial people. Where will they go? Brooklyn (it’s just as
expensive as NYC)? Philadelphia? Los Angeles? San Francisco? Portland?
Seattle? Boise? Berlin? Barcelona? Warsaw? Madrid?
We can only hope for a better future for the world and it's people, a
better world that lacks the greed and bullshit of previous leaderships.
I can only hope that this project will be able to continue to follow
the lives of all those who have participated with me in 1234NYC and
that their lives in or out of NYC will be fruitful.
* Farhad J Parsa. January 19, 2009.
http://gallery.me.com/fjpa..rsa#100209