Selfie sticks, mirrors and drones are popular tools for capturing personal photos, but a Brooklyn artist is introducing a new approach using the city’s traffic cameras.
Morry Kolman, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, has developed a website that allows users to take selfies with over 900 traffic cameras operated by the city’s Department of Transportation.
Kolman, who is also an artist, joined “Mornings On 1” Tuesday to explain his inspiration for the project.
“I’ve been taking a class taught by this artist…and it was all about imperfect images, just how to take images that are not necessarily good, but showcase the many different ways that we can create them. And one of our assignments was to take an image without taking it. And that could be AI, that could be collage, and I decided to use surveillance. I’d known that the Department of Transportation had all these traffic cameras around, and I was like, ‘Well, why don’t I take a selfie with those? And then I thought, well, I can take this selfie myself. Why don’t I help other people also use it to take selfies?’”
Kolman noted that the Department of Transportation has not objected to his use of the cameras.
“The DOT hasn’t come after me for it. All the information is publicly available. And to be honest, my tax dollars pay for it, so I would hope that I have access to these cameras.”
He also shared tips on the best locations for selfies.
“There are a couple good spots. A lot of them are in Brooklyn. I’ve seen the Union Street and Third Avenue stop is pretty low to the ground and close. I’ve seen a lot of people use the Bushwick Avenue and Gates Street stop, which is my local stop intersection for testing. And a lot of people go there. But I mean, you can see that some things are highways and some things are big intersections and the smaller side streets are normally a better bet.”