After realizing he wasn’t going to play basketball as a career, Andre Wagner channeled his energy into photography.
Wagner, who studied social work in college, decided to become a photographer, incorporating what he had learned in his studies.
He moved from his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, to New York City, where he started graduate school but stopped after getting a studio photography job at Fab, the e-commerce website.
Last June, however, he was laid off. He dove into freelance work and his own personal project — documenting moments on the streets of New York City. He often heads to crowded areas like Midtown to capture the rush of crowds who are too busy to care about a photographer.
Since then, Wagner has exhibited in Paris and New York, and most recently in Los Angeles.
“The finances aren’t always what I want them to be, but things always find a way to work themselves out,” he told Business Insider. “The fact that I’m not homeless at this point, sometimes I have to pinch myself.”
New York City is a perfect place for Wagner to take photos, as the amount of people he can capture is never-ending. He does, however, tend to gravitate towards certain areas.
He likes to shoot a lot around his neighborhood of Bushwick, around Midtown during the rush hours of the work week, and in SoHo where there are people wearing all sorts of interesting clothing.
Wagner's passion project — photographing strangers as they pass on the streets — has become less nerve wracking with time. He says it's most difficult to do when he's alone with just one or two people on a block; it's much easier in bustling areas where people are hurrying along.
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