Living in an overpopulated city like New York, indoor space is hard to come by and therefore quite expensive. Typically when a photographer builds a set, they will rent studio space. But to build a set, all you really need is a wall and a floor. So I had the epiphany that instead of paying for a studio space to build photo sets, I would just build them on the sidewalk.
In NYC, many people don't own cars. As a result, when people move, many will just buy new furniture and start from scratch instead of bringing their furniture with them. This causes people to ultimately leave their old furniture on the street or give it away for free on Craigslist. I decided to capitalize on this and start using these gems as pieces for my photo sets.
I put these two ideas together - using unwanted furniture and building sets on sidewalks. When I first started on this project, Gozde Eker helped with set design. However now I do all the set design as well. I pursued this project in order to get people to question perspective. When people look at the cropped in images that I shoot on the street, people almost always think they are actually interiors. I think this idea gets people to recognize that when you're looking at a smaller piece of a larger picture, you can often be mislead.
More info: setinthestreet.com
Bathroom Cropped
Bathroom Street
Christmas Cropped
Christmas Street
Times Square Cropped
Times Square Street
For this set, the Times Square Alliance invited me to build the set and it was not done guerrilla style like my previous ones.
Basement Cropped
Basement Street
Bedroom Cropped
Bedroom Street
Proposal Cropped
Proposal Street
Dining Room Cropped
Dining Room Street
Typewriter Cropped
Typewriter Street
After conducting my own photo-shoots for "Set In The Street", I leave the sets up for a week for pedestrians to interact with
