WHO?
My name is Sara Messinger (b. 1998), and I was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In the beginning of 2019, after years of playing soccer, I gave it all up and moved to New York City to attend school. Up until this point, I knew nothing about myself–all I had ever done since my childhood was play soccer. I had an obsession with the streets of New York, and I wanted to be part of it… although I wasn’t sure in what way. I could be found observing life for hours in Washington Square Park–no camera yet. In the summer of 2020, I finally started making pictures. These walks I went on with my camera were a form of meditation for me, the camera forced me to be present and it encouraged me to interact with the street.
WHAT?
Most recently, I’ve been documenting a group of teenagers that meet up every day after school in Tompkins Square Park. Interestingly, this project is allowing me to explore youthhood in a way that I had not experienced as a shy and reserved kid growing up.
WHEN?
I am fascinated by the serendipity and the magic hidden in the everyday world. To discover and reveal the secret beauty of the everyday experience is why I try my best to observe and be mindful of everything. I am wandering every day in my mind and on my walks. I believe it is this combined psychological and physical wandering that leads me to these moments of magic. For this reason, I always have my camera to encourage me to look, search, question and hopefully bring me closer to understanding.
WHERE?
In New York, my favorite places to photograph are the parks–especially, Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park. I am interested in how people spend their time in leisure. I was never attracted to capturing the hustle and bustle of men and women in suits in Midtown or the shoppers of Soho. I don’t like fluff. I enjoy capturing people trying to express themselves and be their most genuine selves, that’s what I think I find in the parks. People let their guard down, and that’s what I am most interested in– you can see this in their eyes, that’s the emotion that I want to capture.
WHY? I didn’t speak much growing up. I watched and observed most until my late adolescence and some of my adulthood. Maybe this has something to do with my obsession with seeing. Inside I was screaming though. Screaming to be understood by others, but most importantly myself. When I finally committed myself to photography, I never left my camera behind. In all honesty, my camera became a security blanket for me. In that way, I still think of myself as that shy kid that was afraid to talk in school. But the more that I photographed, a wave of empowerment and confidence soon developed. The more I got to know my camera, the more I felt one with it. With time, I felt that my once shy self was able to express myself honestly for the first time–a feeling I had not felt with the concrete nature of words. By giving myself to photography, it has in exchange pushed me to be my most open, vulnerable, and honest self. The camera soon revealed to me it’s mystical power to describe the indescribable. I was in awe and utterly fascinated by the poetic, vague, and descriptive nature of the visual language.
