Statement:

The photographer goes out before dawn to mostly deserted streets, sets up his equipment--tripod, camera--and waits for that short time before dawn when the light in the sky becomes vibrant and clear. Then he captures photographs with unexpected colors and movement. He uses what he calls “extended exposure technique,” keeping the shutter of the camera open much longer than a typical snapshot, allowing the light to seep into the film.

According to the photographer, Flint Gennari, “Predawn ambient light offers another world, beautiful and entirely different from the same spot at 12 noon. Sometimes I wonder why people take pictures during the day at all.”

Each morning brings a special light that is similar to dusk, but fresh and cleansed of the rush of the work day. Flint is intrigued by the idea that this virgin pre-dawn world will be overrun with humans when the work day begins. He was initially drawn to the subject matter because “During the hustle and bustle of the work day people have no time to appreciate their surroundings.”

The world before dawn is not completely devoid of humans however. Flint runs into kind, interesting souls, as well as threatening types, gangs of thugs, and territorial police officers. He gets questions like, “What the hell are you doing on my street?” Other times total strangers have engaged him, even posing within the photograph, like in “The Proposal” and “Gravitational Pull of Attracted Bodies.” These predawn interactions make the artist a little more aware of the human condition. There are usually only 20 minutes until the light becomes white, so a rare street-sharer, interrupting the silence, makes Flint conscious of his role as an artist in a changing society.

However, the photos in this project are not particularly political; it’s art for art’s sake. Flint believes in pure visual expression, in a non-verbal sense. These cityscapes simply present a magically vivid view of the world, a view Flint experiences as “orgasms with my eyes.” The photographs challenge reality, finding beauty and unexpected color and light in the time before the sun rises.

He has been going out on these early morning shoots since 1992. The project he was working on then, The Morning Project, brought the inspiration for this website. Flint has photographed cities all over the world, and hopes to make a map of every city.

Map of Staten Island is made possible by an Original Work Grant from the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI), with public funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.