3 minute read

NEW YORK

Next Article
THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

& Snapshot in Time by photojournalist Corey Layne Davenport

Advertisement

New York City, finally.

With absolutely no itinerary and a week in New York City, I spent my time exploring each borough with my camera in tow, walking around, taking in all the information my brain and eyes could handle.

Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated with every aspect of NYC. The skyscrapers that pierced the clouds on foggy days, the subway lines stretching from one tip of the city to the other, millions of people sprawled across every inch of available terrain just going about their day-to-day life. All of it just seemed so beautiful to me.

While I had spent most of my early-mid twenties touring with bands, visiting every state and major city in the continental United States, this trip, in particular, was vastly different. After years of only being able to experience everything through the window of a van, from the stoop of a friend's apartment, or on the sidewalk in front of a music venue, it was finally my time to explore.

I have always been around photography. My father shot a lot of black and white film when I was young, and he would let me sit in with him while he developed the negatives. I was also allowed to help in the printmaking process. Being around nine or so, watching the alchemy of printmaking was a big deal. Seeing the paper being exposed under the enlarger, and coming to life in the chemistry baths. Learning about how time was relative to every step. Something about those days kicked off a lifelong pursuit of dynamic imagery.

Photography has been with me since my very formative years, and I took photos all the time. I always had a 35mm point and shoot, or disposable cameras, as digital had yet to exist or make any significant impacts.

Through my teenage years and on into fatherhood I had my camera. I took cameras with me to Iraq, and continued to shoot after I returned home from the war.

Something about photography excites me like no other art medium. I believe it's the fluidity of life that keeps photography so new to me despite having spent almost three decades doing it. I'll asks what I shoot I usually respond with, "anything that is beautiful or interesting." Beyond that I cannot really explain why particular subjects are appealing to me.

With all that being stated, I do find myself out in the streets of cities most, because I can find almost everything there. People, buildings, cars, trash, animals and so on. The streets are a strange amalgamation of lives, dreams, concrete, steel, and indifference. I find myself gravitated towards the stories the streets have to offer, and most of them are hard stories. Broken dreams, mental health, drugs, and a lack of help all filter to the streets in a crescendo of grotesque beauty.

It's hard to describe to anyone that filters out the reality around them when they go to dinner downtown. Passing the most marginalized people and never putting a face to a system that has failed countless lives. I try to push through and put faces to the situation in order to have others stop for a moment and hopefully reflect on how others are being treated.

The majority of my work is a kind of keep shooting until my twilight, being as it is that photography is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.

THE ‘WHY’—

When it comes to my photography, I don't feel that I reside in any one genre. I do have my own style for sure, but I don't have a particular thing I like to shoot more than others. When anyone storytelling, and glimpse into a moment that would most likely have gone unnoticed without my camera freezing it in a frame for viewing.

The rest of my work is focused on the beauty of a city, any city, without the radical human element. I choose to focus on buildings, windows, street lights, and all the various other aspects of a city that make them unique. To me, these perceived small aspects are just as grand as anything else in the greater story of any city.

They are imbued with small parts of those who participated in the design, creation, or installation of any given piece. In essence, to me, the city is far more part of the human condition than just the lives being led in them. They are indeed a direct reflection of us, as they wouldn't exist without us.

I want to cover the untold human element of the city itself. I need to continue to capture these very real and visceral stories from people out in the streets, it's a compulsion and one that I'd rather not look past.

Photography has given me a purpose beyond myself. I'm nothing more than a release for a shutter to document various moments amongst trillions of moments worth of stories.

Photography has given me a peace I cannot explain, and brought me back from the edge of darkness after the war.

I realized that I have something that others don't. I have an eye for the subtle details of untold stories happening to underappreciated people. It's a gift and a burden. I am okay with both.

This article is from: