Shadow Play

Photographs by Vincent Tullo 11/20/2017Updated 11/5/2018

Vincent Tullo has spent his whole life in New York—going to school in Chelsea and living on the Upper West Side—and credits the five boroughs for building his work ethic. “The City is constantly moving, so it puts this immense pressure on you to hustle and push yourself,” he says. “Some people don’t like that pressure, but I love it.” Taking photographs of life on the Lower East Side, Tullo used the neighborhood’s geography to find distinctive lighting: “Being near the water toward the end of the day always leads to interesting shadows,” he says. Between those shadows, he caught New Yorkers in unguarded moments that read like single frames from an indie movie—playing basketball, fixing a car and, in one case, kicking back in a recliner on the sidewalk. —Jonathan Zeller