Captioned by year and location, the black and white images are timeless. Each image is carefully composed of an untold story, happening before and continuing after the frame. They show visceral details of the city: a man sprawled on the floor of a train, the spray from a city fountain, a bird in flight, a shard of light on park railings, a crying child being carried down subway steps and couples lost in each other. The people in the photographs appear constantly in motion, moving in and out of frame against the static backdrop of angular city details and architectural canyons. Collectively the photographs in JML NYC 02-23 impart not how the city looks, but how it feels. ‘This body of work encompasses a span of over two decades of living with a camera while developing a cinematographic vocabulary that operates in a multitude of interlocking halves: expression and comprehension, trauma and escape, private and public, the sensualist impulse meeting the familial. These photographs are less about the city as a place, and more about what the city is in my mind, and in my heart: the emotions, the questions, the desires I’ve experienced, and discovered.’
The photographs in JML NYC 02-23 were made over two decades as Joseph Michael Lopeztraversed the streets of the boroughs of New York by foot. Devoid of the visual tropes associatedwith the city, the images instead present a vision of New York as it was experienced.
