I took these photos with a Kodak disposable camera walking along the border between Ridgewood and Bushwick, New York City.

The images speak to my often overwhelming, frequently isolating, experience of city life.

ALONG THE BORDER BY JACOB MONIZ 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 116

JACOB MONIZ

Mark Rothko said of his artistic process: “I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers. Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin as an unknown adventure in an unknown space.” His art, contrasting paints layered by distinctive washes and blends, surreal and expressionist strokes, brims with the sense that he has had a long and storied journey. My journey began in California with an upbringing split between the San Francisco Bay Area and the agricultural expanse of the Central Valley; traveling like brush strokes across the canvas of the Altamont Pass, moving backwards and forwards, up and down, side to side while oscillating there and back again. The brush strokes grew longer, wider, and increasingly erratic. The images in Ridgewick represent the brush strokes of my journey spent in New York City. Central to my work is the queer experience of multiple worlds with multiple selves. My artistic journeys lead to confrontations with loss, longing, the power of memory, and the dignity of letting go. I have a grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame to fund a multimedia arts project based on my family history in São Miguel, Azores. And I have been selected as a 2023-2024 Fulbright Student Researcher to continue work on this project at the University of the Azores. jacobanthonymoniz.com

Image by Emma Pilkington Mead