Although having been living in Manhattan since year 2001, I used to live in Brooklyn for seven years before, mainly because my college, Pratt Institute, has campus there. In a way, I learned everything from art of photography through “how to live in this country” in Brooklyn.
Life in Manhattan is convenient, fast-paced, and exciting, but I believe something is absolutely missing, compared to life in Brooklyn. Because of it, I even think it was so fortunate of me to have learned and practiced my kind of photography in Brooklyn, not in Manhattan.
When I visit Brooklyn nowadays, I can feel it even stronger: In Manhattan, everything seems fairly in control, but in Brooklyn, something still remain out of control, with which you could find some kind of joy; In Manhattan, you can see another person with a camera on every street, but in Brooklyn, you could own the street with your camera…
On my way back from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I sometimes regain my pride as a photographic artist. I can call Brooklyn “my home,” where I successfully developed my own photographing life in my earlier years in this country. KT