Alone in a faraway land lost in the pages of a book.

“Zen in New York City”

Who says Zen isn’t possible in the streets of New York City?

Granted, the term “hustle and bustle” may have been coined with something
like New York City in mind and would no doubt induce images of yellowcabs
and jumbotrons, sounds of horns blaring and snippets of conversation, and
smells of diesel and souvlaki, but as photos in Virgelio Carpio’s
“Solitude in New York City”, an adventure in HDR photography would attest,
calm emanates from within.

Virgelio “Billy” Carpio has been photographing New York City since 2009.
He uses HDR (high dynamic range) processing, a digital photography
technique used for balancing lighting in high contrast scenes. Combined
with slow shutter speeds, HDR eliminates moving objects in a photo – cars,
traffic, people – and occasionally leaves a lone individual standing or
sitting still against an expansive cityscape. The effect can be surreal.
Because whereas in reality, the lone individual is engulfed in traffic and
commotion, the resulting image is devoid of crowds save for that lone
individual in a seemingly Zen-like state.

Virgelio Carpio lives in the outskirts of the Catskill region in “slightly
upstate” New York. His works have been displayed in Mountaindale, NY, a
growing arts community in the Catskills, and Ellenville, NY, a hamlet
known for the arts and nestled in the valley between the Catskills and the
Shawangunk Mountains.

Virgelio Carpio hopes that through his photos you will have a unique
experience of the skyscraper canyons that is New York City, one in which
you can focus on the people that inhabit it, one solitary figure at a
time.

Opening night of “Solitude in New York City” is on July 30, 2012 from 6:30
PM to 8 PM at the Philippine Center on 556 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10036. You may contact the Philippine Center for inquiries at
(212)575-4774 or Virgelio Carpio at (845)551-1117 or
billy.carpio@gmail.com. More information can be found at the artist’s
website at http://www.solitudenyc.com. The exhibit will run at the
Philippine Center until August 10, 2012.