Self-Reporting

Two women taking photos in a busy urban environment, with one smiling and holding a smartphone, while the other captures an image with a handheld camera.
Times Square, New York

Seems like if you don’t photograph yourself somewhere, then the place, or maybe you, don’t exist. Almost everyone I saw in Times Square was busy photographing or videoing themselves, so they could prove to their followers that they’d been.

The School for Children Who Don’t Need it

A promotional banner for Gilded Lily Nursery School advertising enrollment, featuring an image of a mother and child interacting with educational blocks, with greenery and an American flag visible in the background.
East 96th Street, New York

To gild the lily:

  1. To embellish or improve something unnecessarily. 
  2. To add superfluous attributes to something. 
  3. Make unnecessary additions to what is already complete. 
  4. Adorn unnecessarily (something that is already beautiful).