THE TRUTH ABOUT: Candid street photography max marienko | History Defined

Speaking about his ongoing series Borderless City, Max explained: “Borderless City is my ongoing attempt to understand New York as a place of many cultures where national borders quietly collapse into everyday life, and people blend together without ever really stopping.”

The photographer added that the project is less about grand ideas of diversity and more about the small, often overlooked moments: “This project focuses on small, awkward, sometimes funny moments where cultures overlap. These scenes are not staged; they happen in the city held together by movement, improvisation, and coexistence.”

For Marienko, the series is not about defining people by origin, but about shared space and lived reality: “It’s about what happens when all those places collide and start sharing the same few square miles – imperfectly, beautifully, and sometimes strangely – and call it home.”

The second series, Imitation of Chaos, continues this exploration through the language of street photography itself: “For me, street photography is about those unexpected moments when chaos, order, and emotion briefly come together,” Max says. “They may look messy or random at first, but they often have their own rhythm, and that rhythm is what gives the city its character.”

The New York-based photographer described his approach as a balance between observation and intuition: “I enjoy complex compositions, but sometimes the simplest photos that reveal emotions are the best. The best shots are often the ones that just happen without planning, when everything falls into place naturally.” 

Ultimately, he is drawn to unpredictability: “I seek these unplanned moments because they can be the most powerful.”