Photography by Sally Davies

Carmine and Taurice

Paris Sweeper

Noodle Shop at Christmas Eve

NYC Subway

Three Girls Texting

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A native of Winnipeg, Canada, Sally Davies has called Manhattan home for 33 years. She achieved her first public attention in NYC in the mid 90’s with her “Lucky Paintings” and “Lucky Chairs” exhibits, with the OK Harris Gallery and the Gracie Mansion Gallery in New York’s East Village. Her art has been featured on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” Ted Demme’s film “200 Cigarettes,” and her Lucky Chairs have been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and “Sex in the City.”

Her photos can be viewed at the Bernaducci Meisel Gallery in New York City.

Davies has been photographing NYC for 33 years.

http://www.sallydaviesphoto.com

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Q&A:
1. What artists have influenced and/or inspired you?
Tom Waits, Diane Arbus, Steve Earle, William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, Carolyn Newhouse, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, William Boroughs, Jim Cuddy…and so many of my contemporaries…street photographers out there every day now, doing really good stuff.

2. What inspired you to start photographing?
My Dad was a weekend photographer. He gave me my first camera when I was in my young teens. I’ve taken photos ever since. I graduated college with a degree in painting. I was an ok painter, but eventually it didn’t work for me. I stopped painting and started photographing full-time around 2000.

3. Can you describe a bit about the process? Do you stand there waiting for the perfect shot till it happens?
No. Never.
I don’t leave my home without a camera in hand, even if it’s a quick trip to the corner store. It’s all about walking around. Paying attention to whats going on around me. I live in the east village of NYC. It’s a 24 hour situation. There’s a million stories going on out there all the time.

4. Are they ever staged?
No Never. Except for obvious portraits.

5. How do you get the humans to be such a perfect part of the whole?
Not that sure that I’m looking for perfection, ever. And perfection is in the eye of the viewer anyways. So that’s a waste of psychic time. And in the end, it’s our imperfections that draw us to each other. The part of us all that’s broken, that’s the glue.

6. What is your favorite work of your own?
That changes all the time. When you shoot every day and through everything you do, it’s more like a story…that keeps going, not so much an individual image. But I think this week it would have to be “Charles at Church”. Charlie died last Saturday and this feels like his memorial photo. New York City does not feel the same without him.

Charles at Church