New York City (Motion)

This photographic base was shot during Manhattanhenge, 2016 in New York City.

Printed on Fine Art Hahnemühle Hemp Natural Line 290 g/m2.

Each print comes signed and numbered. 

Unframed. With a small white border. Send in a tube.

Print size 90 x 75 cm - Edition of 10

Print size 60 x 50 cm - Edition of 10.

Print size 30 x 25 cm - Edition of 10.
Print size 10,5 x 14,8 cm (DIN A6) - Open Edition.

“A moment refusing to stand still – or why taxis might just be the real poets of the city.”

Thomas Haensgen’s New York City (Motion) from the series Kinda New York is a love letter to chaos that, in the right light, almost looks like order – or at least like it once thought about becoming order before deciding it had better places to be. The image feels like the city itself: alive, overloaded, jittery – a snapshot from a dream that refuses to take place because it’s too busy running off somewhere else.

What initially looks like a mistake – the image is blurry, the colors fragmented, the shapes in motion – is, in fact, a deliberate precision of imprecision. Haensgen chooses his subjects as though he’s trying to eavesdrop on a conversation he barely understands but still finds fascinating. The result? An image that reads like an email you’ve already answered in your head three times before actually reading it.

The yellow cabs, quintessential New York icons and yet barely recognizable, seem less to drive than to flicker – leaving streaks of light as if they’ve just had a poetic idea they need to jot down quickly. And in that motion lies the paradox New York City (Motion) is the opposite of stillness but also the opposite of purposefulness. It’s an in-between moment where the city seems to whisper:“I don’t move for you. I move for myself.”

Artistically, Haensgen nods to the street photography traditions of Saul Leiter or Ernst Haas, who in the 1950s turned the city’s play of color into visual paintings. Yet while Leiter and Haas often found their subjects in moments of stillness – a window display, a woman in a coat – Haensgen pushes everything into motion. Here, it’s not the city itself that is reflected but the speed at which we perceive it: too fast, too bright, and yet – somehow – exactly right.

It’s this speed that sets Haensgen’s image apart from other depictions of urban landscapes. He adds a flicker to the often static perfection of architectural photography, a tremor that feels like the flutter of eyelids when you’re on the edge of sleep, and your mind is still wrestling with the day. That the image is titled Kinda New York is no accident: it’s the essence of the city – not as it looks but as it feels. Like the moment a taxi flashes past, just recognizable enough as a cab, leaving you wondering if someone inside is just as lost as you.

New York City (Motion) is, ultimately, a visual poem – one that asks more questions than it answers, and for that very reason feels so familiar. It’s the life of the city captured in 1/10th of a second, yet so infinite you could almost live in it.