New York Story - 1990's. Photography by Suna — Suna & Toast

“It is more important to click with the people than to click the shutter”

— Alfred Eisenstaedt -1895 - 1995

Photography has been a keen interest of my over the years, I remember when Dad used to click away with his Kodak camera when we were kids, he took pictures of us all the time, on holidays, birthdays and park visits. He went through a phase of using Polaroid slide film, and after most holidays the projector and screen would be taken out of their boxes and assembled. We would have great fun as a family looking at the slide show of our holiday memories. Then there were all the black white pictures taken over the years, kept in a tin biscuit box. They were all reviewed and enjoyed again and again.

When I moved to New York City in the 1990’s and was working a fulltime day job as a designer, the world was my oyster. I had so many options of things to do during the evening or weekends, but after exhausting eating places, clubs and bars, I had a thirst to learn something new again, which actually turned out to be something old I had studied also a bit during my art school years-photography! I enrolled to study evening classes in portraiture at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and had the best teacher ever. He was strict and brilliant and had shot for Time Life magazine back in the day. So after getting the bug I took another term of advance portrait photograph, than another of printing.

I lived in a bedsit in Chelsea, the railroad apartment in the West Village at 21 Leroy street. I set up one corner of my apartment, where I took portraits of friends and colleagues in the same chair same corner using my 35mm Nikon camera. I printed each and every image myself using all my savings (after paying my rent and bills and buying my food for the month) on hiring a dark room at the weekends and for paper to print on. I loved spending hours in the darkroom seeing the images appear in the developer, controlling the look and feel of each one. I selected a few of images to share with you in my New York Story.

“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words”

— Ernst Haas 1921 -1986