Leica & Memory: Do We Remember in Stills or Motion?

New York City moves too fast to hold onto. It rushes past in a blur of neon, steel, and fleeting glances—an urban symphony of motion and chaos. But does that mean we don’t remember it? Or do we recall it differently—not in sharp, frozen frames, but in impressions, in fragments, in the way the light fell on a rain-slicked street or how a stranger’s silhouette lingered just long enough before vanishing into the crowd?

This is the essence of Leica & Memory: Do We Remember in Stills or Motion?—a project born from my time shooting Leica in NYC and a question that will follow me to every city I visit moving forward. Leica’s unique rendering of light, detail, and imperfection aligns with the way I process memory. The manual focus, the necessity of pre-focusing—sometimes the images are sharp, but often they aren’t. And that’s exactly the point. Because neither are our memories. Some moments remain crystal clear, while others dissolve into abstraction, their meaning shaped as much by what is missing as by what remains.

Through this project, I’m capturing my experience of each city not as a static postcard, but as a reflection of its rhythm, its pace, and the way it leaves its imprint on me. NYC, with its relentless movement, renders itself in motion blur—like a dream just out of reach. Another city may slow down, offering clarity in its quiet pauses. Every place will have its own visual language, dictated not just by its architecture or people, but by how it feels to exist within it.

This is more than a photography project—it’s a meditation on perception, on nostalgia, on how we hold onto places that refuse to stand still. With Leica as my tool, I’m not just capturing images—I’m capturing how a city is remembered. Because in the end, maybe we don’t remember in stills or in motion. Maybe we remember in both.