Marc Yankus | Buildings: The Secret Lives of Buildings

Marc Yankus’s dreamlike portraits of New York City buildings straddle a fine line between documentary and fiction. In The Secret Lives of Buildings he captures the city’s architecture in an uncanny moment of stillness, free from the frenzy of people and cars. The sense of quietude lends elegance to the structures, both majestic and humble. Yankus inspires viewers to see historical buildings with a fresh perspective, offering an idealized and even utopian version of the past, while other buildings are viewed through a lens of potential. Yet in other scenes, the decay of crumbling concrete, chipped-away paint, and remnants of deconstruction paradoxically inspire a sense of agreeable nostalgia.