In early 2007, a 24-year-old Bryan Derballa arrived in New York City with little cash and big ideas. “I flew into La Guardia with two suitcases, a skateboard, and a backpack, and I took a bus and subway from the airport,” he recalls. “On the stairs I’d take one heavy bag, then go back and get the other one, doing these shuttles every 20 feet. Finally this 6-foot-2 Puerto Rican transgender gal came up and said, ‘Honey, you look like you need some help!’ She got me to my friends’ house where I was staying. It was a great welcome to New York.”
Raised in North Carolina and educated in California, the Brooklyn-based photographer Bryan Derballa has an unwavering love for the outdoors. For the last four summers, he’s set aside his work in order to head into the country with his friends. For him, these journeys are essential to his livelihood. As he enters his thirties, they allow him to hang onto what he calls the “liminal state between youth and adulthood. It’s a period of uncertainty that occurs sometime after college but before homeownership, when friends become family and time becomes finite.”
