Justin Bettman #SETINTHESTREET

Like many young photographers, Brooklynbased Justin Bettman doesn’t have a lot of extra cash lying around to dedicate to personal projects. It occurred to him, though, that much of what he would normally pay for on a set with props could actually be found for free on the streets of New York. “It’s expensive to rent a couch, but people are literally throwing them out on the sidewalk,” he explains.

Thus, “#SetintheStreet,” an ongoing series of interiors constructed out of trash, and set up on the sidewalk in the middle of the night in locations ranging from Bushwick to Moscow, was born. Bettman inhabits the set with cast actors and models right at dawn when the lighting is best. Then, he leaves the set on the street with a note encouraging passerby to take images of their own. The longest a set has lasted, Bettman says, is 12 days; the shortest, 4 hours. From what he’s gathered, over 1,000 images of his sets have been posted on Instagram since the beginning of the project in 2014.

Bettman’s aptitude for marketing comes from a background in advertising. After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in business, he worked as an art director for Ogilvy & Mather where he says he was inspired by watching other photographers. His first big assignment was shooting Aziz Ansari for The Wrap and today, his clients include The New York Times, Coca-Cola, American Express, among others.

—Brienne Walsh

Photos © Justin Bettman justinbettman.com