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| Photos © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved |
As soon as New York City completely lifted its restrictions, Washington Square Park just "exploded" with activity to levels seldom seen (as least by me, and excluding political rallies) before the pandemic. It was always a meeting place and center for cultural activity, a hub for politics and culture in our city. For many years, people visiting the park mingled with buskers, performers, musicians, narcissists and poets. However, lately it's as if a massive infectious dose of dopamine-fueled energy was suddenly injected in the bloodstream of the square.
Naturally, this also led to late-night chaos and disturbances (to put it mildly) fomented by out of control youngsters which led to police interventions and resulted in provocative articles in the local press.
I frequently visit the square in the late afternoons, as I plan on producing a photo book with the scenes that I come across during these visits. It's a long term project that will take advantage of the freewheeling months of summer, and will fill the temporary (hopefully) created by the impracticality of international travel.
One of the intriguing characters I see reasonably often is the "Joker". Dressed in various different outfits -including an orange jail jumpsuit- and facial makeup to resemble Joaquin Phoenix's character in the 2019 movie, he seems to be well known among the regulars in park. Occasionally, courageous photographers ask him to pose for their cameras.
I chose to use masking techniques to isolate him from the distracting backgrounds, and for his persona to jump out of the photographs.
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