ARTIST SERIES

Michael Massaia writes:
“In my early twenties I worked in a mailroom and as a street messenger in New York City. I would wander the streets for days at a time, both confused and mesmerized by almost everything that came in front of my eyes. Carrying around an old Polaroid sx-70 camera and boxes of Time-Zero film, I found the perfect tool to document both the romance, excitement, and confusion of the city during the early 2000s. The city was right on the brink of undergoing massive changes both esthetically and culturally. These photos were in retrospect a love letter, as well as a goodbye letter, to a city that would in many ways be unrecognizable 20 years later.

“All of the images were shot using an old chrome Polaroid sx-70 camera & expired Time-Zero film. All of the manipulations are done by hand using wood carving tools on the original time-zero positive. The final prints are pigment prints scanned from the original manipulated Polaroids.”