Density...Chaos...Disrepair...Impermanence...Diversity...Simultaneity...Disorder

The soul of New York City is this.

The soul of New York City resonates in the cacophony of wildly divergent wants, needs, and desires, of its citizens, both past and present, all crammed together and forced to coexist in a seemingly uncaring urban landscape.

New York's densely frenetic layering is a major inspiration for my work. I love how old storefront signs peak out behind new ones, and how a building door can be a canvas for artists, taggers, and guerrilla marketers. A lamppost is rarely just a lamppost. It is a community bulletin board, graffiti showcase, exercise bar, and old sneaker receptacle.

To me the city is at its best when its functions overlap, histories intermingle, and cultures collide, creating exciting and ambiguous new relationships. This delirious frenzy, the heart of New York City's ecology, engages a "war between beauty and ugliness which demands both become strange new things."

My chopped-up, blown-apart and reconstructed sculptural photo collages are an homage to the churning engine of New York, which is constantly creating new cities, both beautiful and ugly, right on top of the old one.

-Josh Goldstein

manhole covers L.E.S. tenement doors construction sites shuttered storefronts Chinese take-out menus Coney Island snack bars rooftop pigeon coops Brooklyn roofscapes mango ladies Chinatown buses car stereos blasting bachata Roosevelt Avenue Cross-Bronx Expressway Senegalese knock-off watch hawkers subway musicians Canal Street view of Brooklyn and Manhattan from Kosciusko Bridge Bomb Squad beats Fulton Street potholes Chinatown rooftop graffiti Sunset Park helado vendors the 7 train Hassidic message boards Bensonhurst's Street West Indian hot sauces dollar vans kebob carts bodegas scratchiti wheat paste posters stop sign stickers newstands Redhook ballfield food vendors rush hour delivery trucks delivery bikes hustlers Russian street-side bakeries Times Square empty lots really ugly buildings sweat dope sneakers roti shops the Cage guys playing pick-up basketball in street clothes community gardens grabbing a slice underground food courts in Flushing cab drivers Spanish Harlem P.S. 261 steamy summer days in Brooklyn day laborers on McDonald Avenue the fountain in Washington Square when there is no water in it black outs lunch carts off of 6th Ave. in midtown B&H Photo REVS paan windows of Jackson Heights Urdu newspapers chino latino Mermaid Parade Shakespeare in the Parking Lot Habana Outpost sari shops on Liberty Avenue