TITLE: Pupil-Less

Delving deeper into New York City street culture reveals the unruly truth behind the homeless epidemic in front of our eyes. Mayor Eric Adams has conducted a citywide search, dismantling any homeless encampment in sight without a concrete plan for housing. With an estimated 2,400 people live on city streets and in subways, according to an annual tally taken in January 2021, this has affected a vast majority of the public park population within the city. This image depicts the beautiful woman that I interviewed, who has been surviving in the parks since the 1980's. She was the most unique person I've ever met. Eyes turned grey, pupil-less, with little to no teeth she sat in front of me smoking a cigarette. During an emotional conversation with this woman, she told me how she was kicked out of her makeshift home in the parks, as a result of the Mayor's attempt to 'clean up the city.' She now paints and sells her work on the streets, never staying in one place for too long in fear losing everything again. This is her story.

AUTHOR: Lily Kurtz (United States)

Lily Kurtz is an interdisciplinary artist primarily focused in portraiture, fine art photography, fashion portraiture, and filmmaking. They reside in Los Angeles, but are currently studying in New York as a transfer student from NYU Tisch to Parsons School of Design working towards their BFA in Photography. In the past month their work has been displayed on a billboard in Times Square for a Spotify advertisement. The artists work is also apart of a upcoming Ted Talk by Constance Hockaday. Although, they’re best known for their work on HBO’s new queer series called Generation produced in 2020. Kurtz’s work varies from an array of personal experiences covering transmasculinity, queer exploration, rare disabilities such as Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (condition causing blindness in one eye at birth), and being a child of interracial adoption. These experiences shape their work in a way that allows the viewer not only feel uncomfortable, but question the very shoes they walk through this world in today.