London Sunset

Sunset in London near Buckingham Palace.

Back in London for business meetings and to see family, I had been enjoying the beautiful autumn weather...until the rain came. But the sunsets. Love a good sunset.

Segmented Realities

Segmented Realities by José Parlá at the Standard Hotel.

Artist José Parlá's recent artwork, titled Segmented Realities, is about immigration, so it's appropriate that it sits kitty-corner from our office in front of the Standard Hotel. Using his hands to shape the thick paint on these concrete slabs, the sculptures represent the translated memories from various places of his upbringing: San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he partly lived as a child; Miami, Florida, where he was born and raised; and Havana, Cuba, where his family originates from. In Document magazine, Parlá says the separate pieces "play the role of immigration" and the sculpture as a whole "carries the history of...who we are as people, who I am as a person[.]" Claire Darrow, creative director for the Standard hotels, likes the contrast between the hotel’s sleek glass and metal architecture with the artwork's rough concrete slabs. “They remind me of what the neighborhood used to be like,” she says in the New York Times, “what’s missing from the neighborhood now.”

All US Embassies and Consulates Will Be Closed on October 9

The State Department informed the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that due to a Department of State consular systems upgrade, consular operations at all US Embassies and Consulates will be closed to the public on Friday, October 9, 2015. Individuals who already have an appointment scheduled for October 9 will be contacted to reschedule. Application Service Centers (ASCs) connected to certain posts may also experience closures. Applicants should review individual consular websites for additional information in the coming week, and also should prepare for possible delays in visa issuance after this date.

Humans of New York: Migrant Crisis

As the U.N. General Assembly opens with a strong focus on Syria and the refugee crisis, and Europe and the United States continue to address the ever-growing number of refugees, it’s important to remember the human side of the story behind all the politics. And there are few better photographers for presenting the human side of any story than Humans of New York's Brandon Stanton. 

Humans of New York (HONY) was started by the Georgia native when after being fired from his job as a bond trader, he "thought it would be really cool to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants, so [he]…set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their photos on a map" but then his project "began to take on a much different character." Stanton started collecting quotes and short stories when he was taking the photographs, and after a lot of hard work and time spent on NYC city streets (he says that he'll "pass 1,000 people before I take a photograph"), his blog took off.

Millions of Different Hardships

With over fifteen million likes on Facebook and a New York Times bestselling book, HONY is one of the most popular street photography sites today. And now Stanton is bringing his unique focus to the refugee crisis gripping the Middle East, North Arica, and Europe. Noting that these migrants “are part of one of the largest population movements in modern history,” Stanton will be documenting their stories and the “millions of different hardships that refugees face as they search for a new home.”

The first story he shares is of Muhammad, who he first met last year in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the time, Muhammad had just fled the war in Syria and was working as a clerk in a hotel when he agreed to work as Stanton’s interpreter. Afterwards Muhammad had planned to travel to the United Kingdom with fake papers, but his plans did not work out. After one family tragedy after another, he makes a harrowing journey and finally ends up in Austria.

Muhammad says:    

The first day I was there, I walked into a bakery and met a man named Fritz Hummel. He told me that forty years ago he had visited Syria and he’d been treated well. So he gave me clothes, food, everything. He became like a father to me. He took me to the Rotary Club and introduced me to the entire group. He told them my story and asked: ‘How can we help him?’ I found a church, and they gave me a place to live. Right away I committed myself to learning the language. I practiced German for 17 hours a day. I read children’s stories all day long. I watched television. I tried to meet as many Austrians as possible. After seven months, it was time to meet with a judge to determine my status. I could speak so well at this point, that I asked the judge if we could conduct the interview in German. He couldn’t believe it. He was so impressed that I’d already learned German, that he interviewed me for only ten minutes. Then he pointed at my Syrian ID card and said: ‘Muhammad, you will never need this again. You are now an Austrian!’

New stories are being added every day.

Where the Children Sleep

Along with HONY, Swedish photographer Magnus Wennman is also currently documenting the refugee crisis with a strong focus on the individual stories of the people involved. In “Where the Children Sleep,” Wennman focuses on the migrant children sleeping on streets and in forests. He notes that “two million children are fleeing the war, within and outside of the country borders. They have left their friends, their homes, and their beds behind. A few of these children offered to show where they sleep now, when everything that once was no longer exists.”

Everything

Everything by Hanna Linden makes me hungry.

New Yorkers love their bagels. And for good reason, as there's nothing quite like a bagel and cream cheese with lox (yum!) on a Saturday morning. To celebrate this very New York culinary item, Swedish artist and New York transplant Hanna Linden created the ingenious sculpture, Everything. The tasty-looking sculptures—a cool time-lapse video documents their molding process—are now on display through October in numerous locations throughout the city including on the Hudson River Greenway and also at Greenwich and Sixth Avenues. Calling the bagel "a great icon of urban living" in DesignBoom, Linden expounds further on its virtues, saying that the "bagel—a circle with no beginning and no end—is evocative of the eternal cycle of city life. The black spray paint is a romantic tribute to the darkness and grime, which are essential and beautiful characteristics of our city[.]"