Photographer Venkata Krishnan Ganesan spent 24 hours in Times Square recently, talking to more than 3,000 people to create 650 portraits.
Ganesan took to the streets during New York’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, and captured many people dressed to celebrate the holiday.
“Times Square is the melting pot of the world. I met people from Guyana to Timbuktu, kids from Palestine living on the Gaza strip, artists, other photographers and tourists,” Ganesan was quoted as saying in newsreports.
Last year around the same day of the year, Ganesan set out to the open on the coldest day of the year in New York City to check his endurance and love for people and photography trying to convince more than 2000 + strangers to be in my fun portrait challenge.
It was more like an elevator pitch to convince each and every one of them to be in my project. “I was able to convince more than 680 + strangers later become part of my life journey as a photographer,” he said in a media release. This year he was able to match last year’s numbers, talking and convincing over 3000+ strangers and getting about 650+ portraits.
He fell in love with the Big Apple with the amount of diversity which hangout in Times Square and wanted to have a diverse portrait of strangers from a different part of the country and the world. He felt it was a great experiment last year talking to people and getting rejected a greater number of times than being accepted. “It was a great test of patience, persistence, physical and mental health,” he said.
Ganesan is an alumnus of the New York Film Academy, where he took a course in photography. “I woke up one morning and thought to myself: ‘why not click pictures of strangers for a whole day,’” said the Chennai native, a father of two who currently divides his time between Salt Lake City, Utah, and New York.