The New Yorker – Interview

Bas Losekoot’s New York Minute

In his new series, “New York and the Urban Millennium,” the Dutch photographer Bas Losekoot focusses on on the city’s passing inhabitants. Shining a flashlight on coming and going New Yorkers, he created photographs with a heightened sense of drama that freeze moments of movement, halting the frenetic pace of New York’s commuter culture. Losekoot writes, “This project is about the city as the center of globalized society and how it reflects on its residents …. How do people react to each other in areas of overpopulation? To me street life is a continuous stream of split-second meetings.”

The pictures make use of negative space and the manipulation of shadows, and in many of the “Millennium” photos, the shadows are more prominent than the people. The series also explores how, counterintuitively, the commute can be a time for introspection and psychological divorce from reality.

“New York and the Urban Millennium,” is exhibited at the second annual Photoville festival, in Brooklyn Bridge Park.