I'MPOSSIBLE NEW YORKERS (work in progress) 2023-present (ongoing)

I’MPOSSIBLE NEW YORKERS is a conceptual exploration of portraiture, brought to life by the performance artist LuLu LoLo. Inspired by great New York City street photography of the 1960s-80s, I have created characters based loosely on images from some of my black and white heroes: Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Richard Avedon, Weegee, August Sander, among others.

Cassie, Washington Square Park, 2024. — Cassie, Poet, Washington Square Park, 2024.

There will be 15-20 final imaginary New Yorkers in the portfolio, each captured at various locations throughout the city, representing a wide cross-section of people, from immigrants to business women, to a cab driver, writers, a widowed housewife, a cabaret singer, a performance artist, a drug addict. Gender, class, and aging are some of the themes explored.

There are two components to the photography: formal posed portraits in the studio, as if taken for a magazine profile, and the photographs created on location which are more candid documentary style, riffing on the inspired history of NYC street photography.

The completed project will feature a documentary context (bio text, maps, etc) to the images, echoing classic street photography and glossy magazine “everyman” profiles so that viewers can question how our public personas have been transformed by technology, the traditional media, and evolving social media. With a transformed LuLu (costumes, wigs, makeup) playing all of these characters, I hope to underscore the Walt Whitmanesque "multitudes" each of us are inside and how connected we actually are to strangers on the streets, because, through luck or fate, we, too, could be any of these "impossible" New Yorkers.

Special shout out to our amazing costume designer: Ramona Ponce.