i was trying to make this perfect, then this happened: Mommy, They Look... *Whispers* Different

Classic Black-And-White Photos Capture The Glamour And Grit Of New York CIty's Past

By: Priscilla Frank

Source: Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/22/arlene-gottfried_n_6023168.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Photographer Arlene Gottfried has been working on a photography project titled "Something Overwhelming" (showing at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York From November six to December twenty) since the 1970s, capturing scenes of the everyday queerness and indescribable variety seen on the streets of New York. Her images today show a part of New York that seizes to exist in its entirety. The photographs depict an open eye, open to all characters, all depictions, all beliefs. Throughout the course of many years, Gottfried has worked towards portraying the peculiarly diverse individuals and “inimitable moments” (Frank, 1) so characteristic of New York itself, depicting the character and change of life throughout the city. After mentioning her mother’s direct orders to not wander, Gottfried stated, “Then I started wandering, but I got a camera because it gave it a little more meaning... a life of wandering is really what it all is” (Frank, 1). Within these words, Gottfried is able to add a form of depth into her images, one that would be absent without the casualty and realness with which the photographs were captured.

As a norm-based and monotonously “equal” society, people grow more and more judgmental and unaccepting of those who fail to conform and get lost within the existing normality. Such works of strangeness are needed; they are needed for people, as a whole, to open their eyes towards the beautifully diverse reality that exists beyond what they are led to see. New York, a fitting description of such characters, is not only the melting pot of culture and varying ethnicities from all over the world, but, for many, it is the epitome of queer differentiation, holding within it the one thing that simultaneously characterizes all of human nature, diversity.