GOTHAM: MORE THAN A PLACE
Hanging art last summer with photographer Peter Kayafas, whom I met by chance somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen in the mid-1990s.
By Bret Csencsitz
In his book People in New York, MacArthur Genius Grant-winning photographer Peter Kayafas captures the faces of New Yorkers on the streets. Forty-three photographs span the years between 1993 and 2004, years when New York was a different city than it is today. The scenes in these black-and-white photographs could be from many places in our ever-evolving city, but each centers on the expression of a soul navigating NYC on an average day, with all the expenditure of effort and vast potential a New York day holds. Two photos from this series became the last new works of art we hung in Gotham Gallery.
35 years after moving here, New Yorkers are still my favorite people. There is a recognition when you jostle a fellow citizen in the street, subway, or office that we are all here for the struggle; we live it every day in full view on the city streets. Moments of elation and fear, sadness and anger, it strikes me that there is almost always a sense of ambition in every New York minute. Whether the driving force be altruistic, idealistic, materialistic, or even criminal, New York is above all a city of action, of striving to survive and perchance to thrive.
Moving. Doing. Succeeding. Failing. Picking ourselves back up. I am happy to be touching base with you from the other side of this Gotham chapter and to be enjoying my new role a little further uptown. I hope to toast or host you soon.
—Bret
My own Kayafas at home, from the collection O Public Road!
