SOME
SORTA
PARADISE
by
DAVID ZHENG
NEW YORK CITY
Some Sorta Paradise is an ongoing photographic series by David Zheng, a New York–based artist born and raised in the Lower East Side, exploring the city as a psychological landscape, less as a literal place and more as a state of mind shaped by ambition, instability, and desire.
The work moves between abstraction and familiarity, distilling the city’s density, speed, and compression into images that feel both surreal and grounded.
The title draws loosely from the story of the “Garden of Eden” and the idea of “paradise” not as something fixed, but as something projected, built from personal expectations and the myth of what New York promises.
At its core, the series reflects a city in constant tension: intimate yet overwhelming, aspirational yet uncertain. Developed through a hands-on darkroom process, the images carry a distinct physicality—grain, contrast, and tonal depth, that translates beyond the print, lending itself naturally to repetition, scale, and placement.
Some Sorta Paradise becomes a portrait of New York not just as it looks, but as it’s felt. Constructed through memory, pressure, and possibility.
