Description

Hans Eijkelboom – New York By Numbers
Publisher: Photonotebooks, 2011
Hardcover, 104 pages, English
Edition: 1000 copies
Size: 14×21.5cm
New in seal

New York By Numbers was created by Eijkelboom over a three week period in May of 2010. The series of images represent a kind of artistic-anthropological study, a meticulous effort to find and photograph one hundred people wearing numbers on their clothing, 1 through 100. Working within the confines of the task (what soon became a game), Eijkelboom has generated a collection of images that are both playful and revealing. His photographs, taken together, are as much driven by the whimsical “need” to capture elusive numbers as they are an opportunity to snapshot a hundred moments activated by an encounter with the right hat, backpack or sports jersey. Each image is, in a sense, the image he’s been looking for.

While the parameters of the game inform and produce each photo—people are often seen in motion, in large groups and buried in the chaos of the crowd—the project touches on how these individual lives, notated by an incidental number, exist in delicate relation to all the rest.