FEBRUARY 2, 2023: Photographer Mason Resnick has just released THE POP PHOTO YEARS, a collection of 40 color street photographs that depicts life in New York City from 2000-2005. The photos show a city trying to recover in the aftermath of 9/11 and finding a new normal. They were taken when Resnick was the managing editor of Popular Photography magazine, primarily during lunch breaks and while walking to and from Penn Station and his office on Broadway and 50th Street.
The portfolio can be found here: https://masonresnick.smugmug.com/The-Pop-Photo-Years-Part-1-Color/
Shot on 35mm film with his trusty Leica rangefinder camera, the THE POP PHOTO YEARS focuses on street life, from busy office workers to visitors in the Times Square, Rockefeller Center and midtown Manhattan areas. “The photos are a visual time capsule of a city that has since undergone many changes,” notes Resnick. “I brought my camera with me any time I left the office and recorded what I saw.” Significant gestures, subtle glances, and surprising juxtapositions are the hallmarks of Resnick’s photographic approach. The photos were shot on high-speed color film, giving them a graininess and grittiness that were well-matched to New York street scenes.
THE POP PHOTO YEARS is the first of three collections of street photographs that Resnick plans to release in the first quarter of 2023. The second collection, which will launch in mid-February, will be a portfolio of B&W photos from the same time period, 2000-2005. The third collection will be photos taken by Resnick under the watchful eye of Garry Winogrand in 1976 and will go live in March.
A Challenging Process
The original negatives had been in storage for years; Resnick found them while building a new photo studio for his New Jersey-based freelance photography business. “The negatives had degraded and many images needed restoration work when they were scanned,” he notes. The months-long process included winnowing through thousands of photos, then fine-tuning the color and removing any degradations to the surfaces of the negatives.
Physical Prints You Can Order Online, Not NFTs: A Deliberate Choice
Every photo in the collection can be ordered as a print. Resnick partnered with Smugmug in creating an online gallery, and Bay Photo Labs in San Francisco for providing physical prints.
“I encourage photography fans to collect physical photographic prints, not just digital files,” says Resnick, who made a deliberate decision not to sell his photographs as NFTs. “I am concerned about the environmental impact of NFT purchases made with Etherium. I am also worried that cyber currency is currently unregulated and volatile. I believe physical prints purchased with US dollars and other stable currencies are a safer bet.”
About Mason Resnick
Mason Resnick is a freelance photographer based in New Jersey. He has worked as the managing editor of Popular Photography, and also worked for Modern Photography, Adorama, and B&H Photo-Video during a career in the photo industry spanning more than three decades. He studied street photography with Garry Winogrand in 1976, and counts Winogrand as one of his biggest influences as a photographer.
CONTACT INFORMATION
To reach Mason Resnick directly, email masonresnick@gmail.com
Sample photos below.
