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New York, Big Apple, Brazilian Heart: My Real NYC

Date

2012

Place

United States

About the Project

This photographic essay captures the dual essence of New York through a visual narrative that shifts between historical architectural grandeur and the sensory explosion of contemporary pop culture. The project explores how the city constantly reinvents itself, preserving its roots while embracing the future.

It documents New York not merely as a metropolis, but as a living organism where each era leaves its layers, creating a unique temporal overlap. The project celebrates the city’s ability to be simultaneously a museum and a laboratory of the future, where every corner tells multiple stories through its architecture and urban atmosphere.

On Wall Street, skyscrapers rise like modern cathedrals against a grayish sky. The One World Trade Center dominates the landscape with its triangular silhouette, a phoenix of concrete and glass reborn from the ashes of history. Around it, mirrored towers reflect not only the daylight but also the dreams of millions who arrive in search of the impossible. In the background, cranes whisper promises of an even greater future, as the city continually rebuilds itself, as if it could never allow itself to stop.

From the East River, Manhattan reveals itself in its majestic entirety—an imposing wall of ambitions crystallized in stone and steel. The dark waters carry golden reflections of the buildings, while a ferry silently cuts through the current, carrying dreamers from one shore to the other. Here, the human scale is completely lost: we are but little ants before this vertical jungle, yet it is precisely this smallness that makes us feel part of something infinitely greater. The skyline is not merely a landscape—it is the very American promise made material.

At the South Street Seaport, time dances between centuries. The masts of historic ships pierce the sky like needles stitching past and present, while the Brooklyn Bridge rises majestically in the background. Here, New York reveals its maritime soul—the city born of the harbor, that grew by welcoming ships laden with hopes and immigrants. The modern ferry sails the same waters that once carried our urban ancestors. Each wave holds echoes of arrivals, departures, and new beginnings, whispering the stories of those who crossed oceans in search of the New World.

Between the towers, past and present dance an eternal waltz. The classic buildings, with their golden façades and green domes, whisper architectural secrets to the mirrored glass giants. This is Midtown in its purest essence: where every window tells a story, every floor shelters a dream. The soft afternoon light caresses the surfaces, creating a play of shadows that transforms the city into a vast urban theater. Here, even the sky seems closer.

The layering of time materializes in this vertical symphony: golden Art Deco embraces mirrored modernism, while structures under construction promise an even higher future. This is New York in constant metamorphosis, where each generation leaves its mark on the sky. The endless windows are eyes that have watched decades of transformation, silent witnesses to stories of love, failures, victories, and new beginnings. In the foreground, a touch of yellow—perhaps a taxi, perhaps a building—reminds us that even within the coldness of concrete, the vibrant heart of the city that never sleeps still beats.

The Brooklyn Bridge rises like an architectural prayer, its Gothic arches framing the sky in gestures of timeless stone. It is more than a bridge—it is a portal between worlds, where Manhattan and Brooklyn meet suspended above the waters. The water towers atop the buildings appear as urban sentinels, silent guardians of the daily lives of millions. The American flag waves at the summit, reminding us that this is a nation built upon bridges—both physical and symbolic. From a Brazilian perspective, it is impossible not to see in this structure the embodiment of the American Dream: solid, ambitious, connecting impossibilities.

From the bridge’s unique perspective, we see New York framed by steel cables and century-old beams. The buildings nestle among the structures like urban birds sheltered beneath the metallic wings of the Brooklyn Bridge. That orange stripe stretching across the entire span is like a pulsing artery, carrying life from one side of the East River to the other. From this height, we grasp the true scale of human endeavor: not merely buildings and bridges, but dreams made vertical, hopes suspended in the air—connecting not only boroughs, but also the hearts of those who came from afar in search of home.

The Manhattan Bridge reveals itself in all its industrial elegance, its vertical cable lines composing a visual score against the leaden sky. It is the younger sister of the Brooklyn Bridge, but no less imposing—a symphony of engineering that sings the song of American progress. The red-brick buildings of Brooklyn line up like a respectful audience, witnesses to the daily dance of cars, pedestrians, and trains crossing this giant harp. To Brazilian eyes, accustomed to Niemeyer’s curves, there is a stern beauty in these straight lines—the geometry of American determination.

Through the majestic arch of the Manhattan Bridge, the Empire State Building rises like an Art Deco mirage, framed by the iron structure as if it were a work of art carefully placed in an urban gallery. It is the icon within the icon—New York contemplating itself through its own creations. The bridge’s trusses form geometric patterns that resemble iron lace, delicate despite their strength. This casual framing reveals the genius of urban planning: even chance in New York seems orchestrated. For those coming from tropical lands, it is impossible not to be moved by this coldness that, paradoxically, warms the heart with its industrial beauty.

Rising above waters that reflect memories, this cathedral of iron and engineering draws arches in the sky like a sleeping giant. Its cables sing silent songs to the wind, connecting not only shores but also hearts and destinies, while the city mirrors itself in the waters like an inverted dream.

The Gothic towers rise like eternal guardians, their arches framing the horizon like windows to eternity. The Brooklyn Bridge, with its web of silver cables, weaves stories between the two shores, a silent witness to a century of dreams that have crossed its wooden and iron walkways.

Between canyons of concrete and glass, where the sky shatters into blue fragments, yellow cabs dance like golden bees in an asphalt garden. Vertical signs rise like modern totems, whispering promises of shows and dreams, while the crowd flows like a human river through the throbbing arteries of the city that never sleeps.

Times Square bursts into a kaleidoscope of neon and promises, where every pixel tells a different story. The giant screens flicker like the eyes of electronic dragons, while the sea of people moves like blood cells within the beating heart of a metropolis that turns every corner into a stage and every passerby into a protagonist.

Here, where reality blends with advertising fiction, the buildings wear mantles of light like digital kings. Messages roll endlessly across the façades, creating an urban poetry woven from brands and dreams, while the traffic sketches golden trails on streets that never fully know silence.

At the epicenter of the urban universe, where all the colors of the rainbow meet in electronic harmony, Times Square pulses like a giant heart. Each screen is a window into different worlds, each advertisement a promise of transformation, and amid this visual symphony, humanity finds itself—small and grand at the same time, part of something greater than itself.

At the corners where the future bends into impossible angles, giant screens embrace the buildings like pulsating digital skin. Oscar promises cosmic steaks while airlines sell blue dreams in pixels that spill color over the concrete. Architecture wears garments of light, turning each façade into a stage where brands perform their seductive urban choreography.

Rising like a castle of brick and nostalgia, this Beaux-Arts building whispers old stories among its neighbors of glass and steel. Its red stripes bleed memories of a gentler New York, while modern skyscrapers bow respectfully around this architectural jewel that refuses to be forgotten by time.

Here, the Earth floats like a blue dream among headphone ads, while skyscrapers rise like fingers pointing to infinity. JVC promises to color our music with planetary tones, and the crowd walks beneath this commercial cosmos where technology and humanity dance a perpetual waltz on the sidewalks of tomorrow.

In the midst of Broadway’s visual storm, two bodies meet in a silent embrace, creating their own island of intimacy. While giant scissors cut through the digital air and Forever glows in pink neon, they remind us that even at the epicenter of the urban spectacle, love still finds its most precious stage in the simple act of holding each other.

Reese’s builds its chocolate empire like a vertical amusement park, where Hershey’s and York compete in a perpetual carnival of sweets. Amid the glass towers piercing the sky, this sugary corner offers tangible sweetness in a city that sometimes forgets the simple taste of childhood, creating a colorful oasis for nostalgic palates.