Birgit Buchart

Space Available | Space Available is documenting the current economic state of Manhattan's richest and most luxurious neighborhoods.

One afternoon late September, after my first visit to the MET since February, I walked down Madison Avenue and found myself in an overwhelmingly melancholic mood taking photos of all the empty spaces, which in the beginning of this year were still proudly displaying the wealthy and glamorous lifestyle of the Upper East Side.

I continued this series over the following week in Midtown and the West Village. By doing so, it became clear to me that this project was not only a matter of the documentation of an economic crisis but also a creative way to finally capture this strange, new, scary and sad feeling, I could never quite grasp or explain but have been carrying inside myself since March. The sudden emptiness, the distorted reflections of the "(new) normal life", the masks, the self-reflecting, the strong contrasts –– it has been a big mess, an emotional chaos, and so feels this series of reflections and contrasting worlds colliding. www.birgitbuchart.com