As it is for many on their first visit to Manhattan, a trip to the infamous Times Square was an inevitability when I went in 2010. However, for those who live in the city, it’s at the bottom of the list given its garishness and teeming thoroughfare. For outsiders who have grown up in cultures that reduce perceptions of the USA to Starbucks, MacDonalds and Pop Tarts, Times Square sadly reinforces this. For a place that had been so aggrandised, I remember being confused about why a high concentration of corporate logos and advertising was deemed an attraction: they are a familiar sight in any city!

Exploring other parts of New York City (such as Queens and Brooklyn) and US cities such as Boston, Washington D.C. and Maine since then has challenged these pervasive European-made stereotypes of USA culture. Nonetheless, Manhattan still remains a challenge. Its communities can initially seem faceless among miles of similar-looking high rise offices and apartments. Observing from the edge of the East River State Park reveals the true density of the urban landscape: it has the presence of a mountain range.

There are fewer large integrated green spaces compared to many other cities, or even just other parts of New York City. This results in the built environment sometimes becoming endless and tiresome, although there is entertainment whilst navigating the shadowy concrete corridors in the cinema of the larger avenues. One of Manhattan’s real attractions is its world-class museums and galleries (MoMA, The Met, and The Guggenheim to name a few).

For this series of photographs, I have incorporated images from my initial trip in 2010 (colour and black and white 35mm film), and from more recent trips in 2016 and 2017 (colour digital). For each year, I noticed I was drawn to the same sort of subjects: the vanishing points between buildings and the people navigating their way through them.