551 Madison Avenue New York

This book, or rather this diary, contains an image captured in a portion of strangeness: the photographing of people on their way, inactive and disconnected bodies and faces, strolling along a road. The whispered silences of travel color the relationship between the body that moves and the role of the street, be it symbolic or simulated. Alberto Damian, through his photographic lens, wants to discover an exact coordinate as an observation point, choosing to let himself go, ignoring the degree of north latitude or that of west longitude in which he is trapped. His looking, in this adventure, is looking at faces and people--people who do not look, people who pass by in a single place, in a fraction of time, who look without being looked at. He sees without being seen. What he proposes, therefore, is a sort of theft: he resumes the defenseless exposure and without the possibility of posing by those who pass. The photographs in this book were taken in New York between 12:44 and 12:59 pm on September 28, 2017, on the sidewalk of 551 Madison Avenue. I photographed almost all the people who, in those fifteen minutes, passed quickly between me--I was half a meter from the curb--and the building, except for those who passed while I changed the camera battery. The book collects practically all the shots taken, in their original, chronological sequence.