Soft Map of NYC

Some maps trace distance. Others trace belonging. This one begins with tenderness.

“So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village.” — E.B. White, Here Is New York

I’ve opened an open call for a new project called Soft Map of NYC.

It’s a year-long invitation to artists across the five boroughs to create new Polaroid-based works tracing tenderness in their own neighborhoods: the quiet moments that hold us in place, the textures of belonging, the daily choreography of care.

From the open call, 26 artists will be selected, with the intention of roughly five from each borough. Each artist will take a one-week turn in 2026 to make a small suite of Polaroids in their neighborhood. Every other week, three of those images will be released for sale on a split commission. The remaining photographs will gather toward a 2027 exhibition and publication with Bad Saturn.

I expect many lens-based artists to apply, but it’s open to all practices that work through tenderness — photography, text, performance, sound, or whatever medium you use to stay with the feeling.

Submissions are open now and close January 1, 2026.
Open to artists living or working in New York City.

Details and form here: https://forms.gle/UJyQ68kW6ApgL3Y29

Soft Map of NYC continues the questions I began with A Map of All My Tender Places: how tenderness behaves like a method, how attention becomes a form of care (hi Simone Weil), and how the city might look if we mapped it by feeling instead of streets.