Rebirth of A City

• Photographer
  Brandon Ralph
• Agency / Studio
  Brandon Ralph Photography
• Technical Info
  Sneak Up On To Roof Tops With Subject, No Lighting Just Use My Leica Monochrome
• Photo Date
  2020-2024

In reBirth of a City, Ralph casts New York’s iconic water towers as the consistent, unchanging image seen over the last century in the ever-changing city skyline in a series of lambent nude portraits in distant, wide-angle perspective. The photographic juxtaposition of these unique wooden relics–still a vital part of daily life–with the strength and softness of the female form offers a wholly new experience of urban physicality: the architectural and the corporeal at once representing life, creation & change.

Raised by a single mother in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood, Brandon Ralph’s perspective was shaped by the contrast between his mother’s belief in the American Dream and the reality of growing up on welfare with learning disabilities. Struggling in school, he was placed in special education and faced an unforgiving system. At eighteen, he lost both parents within six months, forcing him to drop out of NYU. These hardships inform his work, where he uses photography, sculpture, and drawing to explore identity, resilience, and cultural coexistence, inviting viewers to reflect on persever