MESSENGER MOTORMAN
Mark Abramson
Before entering college, I delivered pizza after school in Providence, Rhode Island. More than just a way to save money for the future, that time on the road was a refuge away from teenage drama and angst. I happily hid away in the 1994 Toyota Corolla I inherited from my brother and delivered folks their dinner. Now in New York, I use an electric delivery scooter that a friend named Janice (the name stuck) to commute around town and get lost, sometimes exploring late into the evening as deliverymen dart glances. As a photographer, I've always been interested in the relationship and the intimacy created between myself, the camera, and the other. The distance between us all – how close can I get, and for how long?
Riding, for me, is therapy and freedom. It's my excuse to travel around in the temporary absence of anxiety, zipping in and out of lives if only for a quick, stolen moment.
Mark Abramson (@markabramsonphoto, b. 1988) is a Russian-American freelance photojournalist and documentary artist based in New York City, working across the U.S and abroad.
His work focuses on the intersection of various facets of modern day social issues such as immigration, education, politics, and community. Much of the inspiration for his documentary work, and the more recent conceptual work Two Face, comes from his own family’s history of migration from the former Soviet Union through Europe and to the United States. His interest in experiential storytelling led him to study print journalism at George Washington University, and later to receive further training as a photographer and video journalist at The Washington Post and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.