Martin Roemers – Living in the New Metropolis
+ Brandon Fuller
Martin Roemers’s photography project, Metropolis, looks very promising:
I am documenting the megacities of our time — places with populations in excess of 10 million. Every megacity is a theater, and every city has a different stage and different actors.
Roemers will put an emphasis on people and the dynamism of street life:
I am taking photographs of crowded places where you notice not only the city’s dynamic character but also the individual making his way in the big city. Specifically, I’m looking at the small stories of the street vendor, the commuter, the passer-by, the market stallholder and other pedestrians who populate the street or are a part of the traffic. I present this by photographing busy locations from above.
Moreover, every photo has a long exposure time so that the big city’s vitality is shown through the movement of people and traffic while the image focuses on the small story in question.
A preview of this ongoing project is available in this week’s New York Times Sunday Review. The focus on urban vitality, rather than design or architecture per se, is compelling – here’s looking forward to the rest of the series.