Lillian Maunsbach
Manhattan offers one of the best settings for street photography. The density of people and situations makes it so that no two images are ever the same. I have always been drawn to photographing people as they move through their daily lives, carrying their lived experiences. Everyday moments generate vivid mental images that shape my perception, yet these impressions are impossible to fully capture in a collection of photographs.
This work is a collection of four months of quick snapshots — people I found compelling, moments when the light felt especially beautiful. Through these images, I wanted to express my visual understanding of living in New York: its geometric forms, its cadences, and the material sensation of strolling through the city. Because the camera captures experience within a one-dimensional frame, I chose to cut, layer, and combine images to create a more three-dimensional understanding of my perception.
The project emerged playfully and intuitively as a way to show how I see and live my experience of the city — and, as it turns out, that experience involves a lot of walking.