SOMA Living October 2021

ARTIST OF THE MONTH

But it is calibrated artist’s eye that makes his photos what they are. His compositions juxtapose the haves and the have nots, high style and street style, humans and the urban fabric. His photos are perfectly lit, using only sun, shadows and reflections off the city’s architecture. His photos are candid, fresh and straightforward within the context of the chaos of the urban environment. He shoots with a Leica with a 50mm Summicron APO lens, a Pentax 67and a medium format digital camera, often on his lunch break, usually around the intersection of 57th Street and 5th Avenue. He captures the energy, humor, beauty and pathos of the widest possible array of socio-economic backgrounds, generations, tourists and locals who inhabit the city’s storied sidewalks. There are, to be sure, elements of journalistic documentation and sociology in his work. “You can’t help that when there’s a homeless man outside of Bergdorf Goodman and a wealthy socialite is walking in front of him,” he says. His subjects are often outlandishly dressed, but what you notice is their expressions and the emotions they belie. Ultimately, his work is about the rich and iconoclastic tapestry of people that makes up New York City.

New York Magazine often has arresting covers, but the image on the December 2019 “Reasons to Love New York” issue is so memorable, that it is practically etched in my brain. Daniel Featherstone captured an elderly man crossing 7th Avenue right in front of Penn Station with a line of traffic behind him waiting for the light to turn. It is a moment of frisson that we’ve all witness dozens of times. Will he make it across the street before the light changes? The man appears small and fragile, while the cars seem so menacing. When I look at that image now, I still find myself hoping for his safety, even so far after the fact. Featherstone is a street photographer whose day job is working as a graphics director in the fashion industry. Born in Great Britain, Featherstone has lived in the U.S. since the early 1990s and calls New York City the essential ingredient in his work. “I don’t think I could ever find what I find in New York in any other city,” he says. He says it is a “transient hub of diversity” where “the characters that I interact with range from the plastic surgery aristocracy to naïve tourists to the underprivileged homeless.”

Elizabeth Harrison Kubany is founder of KUBANY, LLC, a communications firm established on her lifelong belief in the power of architecture, design, and art to make the world a better, more beautiful, and more equitable place. She is also the co- founder, with her husband, of Winterhouse Projects, an online gallery platform that promotes the work of emerging artists. @ElizabethKubany

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