Big City, Little Moments: NYC Photographer Heather Gillich

Pulled from the usual rush of New York City life, NYC photographer Heather Gillich’s intimate captures feel limitless in their emotional impact and storytelling capabilities.

New Yorkers are both the creation and the creators of New York City’s infrastructure, and this relationship feels dutifully represented in Gillich’s photography, which often focuses on human subjects as they exist within urban settings.

Take the above photograph for example; the moment of eye contact between this man and the viewer feels personal and powerful within the context of a city street corner, where our eyes are often trained to divert from those around us. His coffee cup and cigarette communicate an early morning exhaustion, bundled against the bitter air of pre-dawn hours. In such a simple depiction, Gillich has captured the nature of perseverance.

Gillich’s human-oriented photography brings layers to her work, as it provokes a natural curiosity surrounding the who’s and what’s of the moments captured.

It reminds us that in loving New York, we are loving ourselves. The ones who call the city’s photographable streets home, bring life to local businesses, and turn open grassy areas into picnic grounds, yoga classes, and painting studios. It’s New Yorkers who filled the city’s streets with murals and neon signs; who toss the pizza dough and plant the flower beds and play the music that echoes through subway stations. New York City’s resilience has and always will be the resilience of New Yorkers – and Gillich captures these New Yorker vivaciously.

If you’re as eager to see the upcoming progressions of Gillich’s work as we are, follow her on Instagram: Instagram.com/HeatherGillich