Squares by Adam Magyar

Adam Magyar is an artist, an anthropologist, and also an urbanist. These many identities meet at a common place: the bustling plazas in Squares, a work that attempts to portray the spatial quality of the public, open spaces. The doctored aerial photos in the series are believable through detail and population density. The careful arrangement of the figures in each city square, along with each individual’s specific clothing and gait, mimic the true dynamics in an urban environment. Even with the bird’s eye view, the viewer’s sense of scale is distorted through the perspective that Magyar provides, for the lack of shadows cast upon the ground plane imply an infinite stretch of square and inhabitance.