Imageine: Rajeev Manikoth’s blind date with Manhattan

After graduating from design school, I set off with curiosity as my compass — and a camera never far from reach. Over the past four decades, I’ve lived and worked across many places, and cultures. Wherever I landed, I found myself drawn to the quiet patterns of daily life — the way people live, move, connect, worship, celebrate, survive. Photography became my way of making sense of it all.

Each frame was a pause — a moment to notice the common threads that run through us, no matter where we are. Sure, every place had its own vibe, its own shifting energy. But beneath the surface, the stories were always human. And through the lens, I learned to see both the sameness and the difference — not as contradictions, but as layers of the same beautiful tale.

I first photographed Manhattan in 1990. The city had a bite to it: sharp, vibrant, restless, always moving. After working in Mumbai, the chaos here felt oddly familiar. Different skins, different streets, but the same undercurrent — people grinding through the noise, chasing time, dodging life’s punches, just trying to make it through. Strip away the surface, and it’s the same story on both sides of the world. Sure, the accents were different, the clothes and mannerisms too — but the rhythm was the same.

That was the age of analog — film was expensive and every frame was precious. I picked up a used Nikon FM from a street vendor, paired it with a 24mm lens, and hit the streets.

Almost every shot here was taken blind, camera slung low at my hip. I wasn’t aiming for perfection, I wanted truth. A raw, ground-level look at the city as it was, not how it wanted to be seen.

I wanted honesty — unfiltered glimpses of life, seen from the street level, the way it unfolds when no one’s watching. These images are fragments of that world: blurred edges, fleeting glances, stories caught mid-step.

These images don’t pose. These are snatched seconds from a city that never slows down.

— Rajeev Manikoth is a designer with specialisation in Visual Communication from NID, Ahmedabad. These images, along with his works on Goa and Kottiyoor, are on display at Museo Camera, Gurugram