Growing up in Long Island, photographer Chris Maggio's experience of New York City was limited to Midtown Manhattan, a tourist destination embodied by the outsider clichés one might expect. It was filled with crowds, sweat, billboards, Broadway shows, double-decker busses and more crowds. In the summer especially, the urban landscape largely untouched by actual New York City residents (except those who work in the neighborhood) resounded as a chaotic smattering of red-faced human sardines.

Settling in Brooklyn in recent years, Maggio channeled these visions into an uncomfortable, yet humorous series appropriately titled Hot As Hell in Midtown, making photographs "celebrating the end of a scorching summer in NYC" last year. Children paint their foreheads with melting ice cream cones, the sun beams down in apocalyptic crimson hues, people resemble the walking dead, their expressions falling somewhere between a vapid gaze and knowing smirk. I spoke with the Maggio to learn more about this work, and his larger commercial and personal practice. 

Interview by Jon Feinstein