For over a hundred years photographers have sought new avenues of visual expression, particularly where subject matter can be manipulated to alter our way of seeing the world around us. Photographers in the early 20th century considered the streets of New York as fodder for their cameras to record the flavor and feel of the urban landscape. Combined with a movement called "straight photography," this began at the very inception of photographers' desire to capture the image without manipulating the print in the darkroom, thus, providing a "truthful" approach to the subject. With and historical consideration for the photographic ideas which inform his art, Leo Mendonça, a photographer of a more recent vintage, has established a body of images that persuade his viewer toward his personal perspective of New York City - its people and its expressions. Mendonça offers a view of the city that sees anew that history which tempted photographers of past generations. Mendonça photographs reveal a slice of urban existence that emerges from their silver gelatin surface in layers of reflected meanings. The viewer is titillated by the enigmatic interplay of image and reflection, as actual and virtual co-mingle in one frame. Because his camera observes more than just the street life passing by, it finds the heart of the city, beating with a vibrancy that describes its personality. Minor White, an influential American photographer, told us that the camera should reveal "things for what they are" and "for what else they are," a cryptic statement that suggests the camera provides more than mere description. Earlier in the 20th century an approach to the concept of straight photography was introduced through the work of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston who were seeking equivalences between form and feeling. Their intention was to obliterate visual information about locale, size, and identifiable characteristics in order to provide an enigmatic view of nature that allowed viewers to see whatever they wished. The photographers of the "Stieglitz Circle" found fascination in the subject of New York, its architecture, its abstract elements. After the Second World War, photographers looked at New York again this time with influences from the various art movements which were generated by an energetic breed of young New York artists. Images of the streetscapes with layers of visual information appear in the 1960s Photorealist movement paintings of Richard Estes, among others, in which the reflection introduces new levels of information that was often obscured by the way in which it was presented, confusing store windows' contents with reflected images from their glass surfaces. Walker Evans in the 1930s had already photographed store windows in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but the layers of meaning in his images were the humanized contents of the window, showing functional objects that described their future owners. Mendonça was aware that his predecessors in the use of the subject had already explored this territory for many years before he came to the city. Having arrived in the United States from Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1990, he discovered that New York brought about familiar longings for his distant home, recreating for him a reflection of that home that was, he commented, "a familiar fit where I was neither simply spectator nor tourist but a seasoned participant." Evolving circuitously into a career in photography, Mendonça had a prior degree in architecture and urban planning from Brazil, which, he noted, made him aware of "the frequent use of signage in the urban setting," which eventually became for him "an essential component of the photograph." The list of photographers who have found their place in the streets of the city filled with varied approaches, each to a personal confrontation with it. Berenice Abbott's love affair with New York in the 1920s and 30s pushed the envelope of the documentary photograph. In her book published in 1939, she stated:      "To make a portrait of a city is a life work and no      one portrait suffices, because the city is always      changing. Everything in the city is properly part      of its story - its physical body of brick, stone,      steel, glass, wood its lifeblood of living breathing      men and women." While Abbott placed responsibility on her feelings toward the city, others found a serendipitous pleasure in capturing special moments. Mendonça responds both to the flavor of the city in his observations and to that happenstance event that causes him to patiently wait for the right moment to use his camera. The result is an interplay of word, image, people, reflections of people, all describing what Pop artist James Rosenquist terms, the fleeting expression of the city. In Mendonca's image of a gargantuan sign for Trump (cover), the view of reflected architecture and people on the street fusing into a statement of its own, enhanced by the medium of black and white which restricts it to a classical document of time and urban essence. Deconstruction: New York City, Columbus Circle, Leo Mendonça, Gelatin silver print on Ilford Multigrade fibre-base paper, 2000, 16 x 20"