What is 1234NYC?

What is 1234NYC?
1234NYC is a personal 10 year photography project I have undertaken that follows the lives of 40 New Yorkers whom I am connected to on a professional and/or personal level.
All persons I have chosen for 1234NYC are "creative professionals" and/or small business owners who either live, work or go to school in Manhattan.
How's it work?
This project began in Autumn of 2007 and will end in Autumn of 2017.
The series is divided into the numbers in the title, 1234, which establishes the year(s) I photograph them. For example: in 1234 (or think of it as 1+2+3+4) the groups are..
1=2007 to 2008. (Autumn to Autumn)
2= 2009 to 2010. (Autumn to Autumn)
3= 2012-2013. (Autumn to Autumn)
4 = 2016-2017. (Autumn to Autumn)

If anyone leaves NYC during those times then they are OUT of the project. But if they return to NYC they are back IN the project.

Each section I have asked questions regarding the private and professional lives and will gather it all in the end as a way to look back over a decade's worth of living (hopefully).

Why did I start 1234NYC?

It was a slow spark that ignited this project. The economic difficulties of New York's increasingly expensive day-to-day and higher rents saw my friends and business owners close up shop and move to other cities because New York had bled them mentally and financially dry.
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The dissipation of New York's creative energy and the loss of it's neighborhoods went hand in hand with the people who were moving into Manhattan and robbing it of it's character. Boutique stores and Starbucks surfaced like crocodiles forcing families, artists, artist spaces to abandon their apartments because of GREEDY landlords and higher costs. Soon enough Friday and Saturday nights became a "Netflix night" since none of the locals wanted anything to do with the throngs of projectile vomiting hookah smoking trash dumping human insects that invaded our blocks over the weekends.
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It came to me one day that I should photograph some of my friends before they disappear. Too often someone close to me would 'check out' either by moving, by going crazy or dying. The past 11 years have been tough for everyone but especially artists. Living artists are often ignored by society until they make money and only the dead ones really do well. Musicians, painters, designers, chefs, photographers, glass blowers, writers, business owners...everyone is trying to create a world, a wink to the undefinable nothingness that can either fill us with life and love or shatter us into a living death that always leads to the final heart stop beating death.
I do not want to forget these creators I have grown up with and I don't want them to be forgotten...so I photograph them in their world and try to show THE WORLD their face...their faces, their eyes, their hungry souls.

FJP