Creativity lives in New York

New York has a huge number of bright creative personalities. Today we would like to once again introduce you to photographer Richard Rothstein. This person takes simply amazing pictures that can inspire many other creative people to create masterpieces. We are very grateful to Richard Rothstein for sharing his story and photos with us:
« When they discover that I’m a native Manhattanite, tourists and New Yorkers not native to the city occasionally ask me if I’ve ever felt the excitement and the rush they felt when they first arrived.  Natives who have fled the city for the suburbs or other cities occasionally ask me how I can stand it after all these years.  I smirk. I roll my eyes. I sigh.  I always respond with some degree of pity.  How many times have I been in Times Square?  Hundreds of times?  Thousands of times?  It flows through your veins. The rush never goes away. New York is simultaneously the most horrible and the most wonderful place on earth; and those two colliding forces generate a violent, sexual, spiritual and radioactive creative energy that is found nowhere else.  Years ago, I discovered that I could release and express all of that through photography.  My life, like manylives, has been a series of dreams come true and nightmares made real, but through it all my photography has been my best and most supportive friend.  And that’s saying a lot because I have an amazing, loving and nurturing circle of brilliant friends. My pasison is to express what I feel and what I see through my cityscapes and my homoerotic portraits.  My cityscapes allow me to touch the city I feel in my soul despite the potholes, homelessness and corruption.  My homoerotic stories somehow complete me.  They have helped me overcome my own fears, my self-homophobia, supporting the courage it has taken to be myself and to feel whole.  My greatest joy is found when I combine the city and the men in my photography.  As I’ve emerged into elderliness, I have had moments of despair.  More than once, doctors have written me off as finished and homebound.  You can learn to live with pain and disabilities; you cannot live without joy—at least I can’t.  Photography has been the mother of invention and I have found ways to get around. My love affair with my birthplace is now going on some 72 years and it never wanes. »