"The project reads less like a photo book than it does an epistolary novel. All the timeless themes of a great work of fiction are there—humor, heartbreak, pathos, love—often wrapped up in the mundane, inelegant conversations that constitute our workaday lives." – ArtNet
"Mermelstein has reworked the great tradition of twentieth century street photography for our contemporary era" – The New Yorker
“The cumulative impression is of a city filled with strange needs, that’s wild at heart and weird on top" – The Guardian
"Mermelstein has been taking an ongoing series of photos since October 2017 documenting the bizarre messages people send to each other while out on the streets." – New York Post
A "thought-provoking series" – Daily Mail
#nyc is Jeff Mermelstein's multifarious, comic and heartbreaking survey of contemporary life as learned through overseen text messages. Written in the new language of acronym and initialism, truncation and cipher wordplay, interrupted by the occasional longueur, people appear to have few inhibitions when faced only with their own reflection in a phone screen, such that they pour their heart-felt desire and lust and hate and vitriol in unfettered streams of text consciousness.
Chaucerian in its breadth and humor, this project reveals the complex inner lives of the city’s residents, and the intriguing richness of emotion that exists within the most innocuous moments of everyday life: on the train, a park bench, or in the street. Here, a short history of New York unfolds, as told directly by one resident to another.
160pp, Flexibound debossed hardcover printed on pre-dyed blue paper
Published by MACK, 2020
19 x 14.5cm
English
