I, Manahatta is an exploration of the perception
of place at a transformative moment in New
York City’s physical and cultural landscape
(1997-2014)—from Giuiliani’s building boom, to
the paused constructions during the recession,
and culminating in the city’s accelerating luxury
homogenization during the Bloomberg years.


The series documents not only the dramatic
physical shifts in the cityscape, but the
nuanced dimensions of how we, as spectators,
perceive and interact with the complex
topography of our urban sphere on social,
economic, and physical levels. It imagines the
city landscape as an organic entity of complex
and vibrant histories that reflect back a version
of our selves. Wides was moved by this intimate
dynamic and by our passionate desire to, as
Baudelaire wrote, “be in our environment, in
the heart of the multitude…in the midst of the
fugitive and the infinite.”