Street-style photographer Watching New York knows you're tired of all the influencers

There are some obvious places to go to see great style in New York City.

SoHo is one of them — not only because of its luxury boutiques, but also because of the streetwear-inflected brands that have begun to fill in the neighborhood's edges.

The L train and Chinatown's eastern reaches have become stomping grounds for a certain set of young styles, from workwear and streetwear to more discordant Gen-Z styles.

Johnny Cirillo’s favorite corner is located just south of the Bedford Avenue train station in Williamsburg. That’s where the photographer spends up to 10 hours a day, several days a week, shooting thousands of pictures of passersby who catch his eye.

He catalogs the most interesting looks on his Instagram account, @WatchingNewYork, which has developed a following of over 1.3 million in a few short years.

Cirillo features mostly young, cool New Yorkers on Watching New York, though he includes many styles, bodies, and aesthetics. He often organizes posts into themed slides, featuring cowboy boots one day, fringe the next. He’s often among the first to document emerging and established trends like the coquette aesthetic or monochrome neutrals as they pour back and forth from the streets to social media.

Abrams is releasing a book of Cirillo’s photographs on April 16, with a foreword by his fan Gigi Hadid.

The account @WatchingNewYork was born from one of Cirillo’s biggest inspirations. The Queens-born photographer worked in restaurants in the 2000s making ends meet, and would shoot wedding, baby and engagement photos on the side.

He took the first photo for what became his full-time job as a street style photographer in 2016, on the day that the beloved New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham died.

“That’s what sparked it, that day,” Cirillo said. “I went out and shot some photos in SoHo. It was a hobby to me, I didn’t put them anywhere.”

Cirillo spent a year taking pictures and sharing them with his wife Kristin, who loves fashion. Eventually he began archiving his favorites on Instagram.

“I never had any expectations,” Cirillo said. “I was enjoying just having them live someplace besides my hard drive.”

The local publication “Greenpointers,” in Cirillo’s longtime neighborhood, began featuring his photos, and he picked up a few editorial gigs shooting for the New York Times and other publications.

Things took off after he was featured in a local NBC segment in 2021. As the city emerged from its pandemic-induced sweatpants era, Cirillo was there to document the way we readjusted our style.

“I was coming out in my car and sitting safely behind the window, capturing people as mask culture became a thing,” Cirillo said. “It started as bandannas and then more decorative masks; people got really creative with them.”

He got his first sponsored deal after the NBC segment aired. Though he only had around 30,000 followers, the jewelry brand Pandora reached out about shooting its latest styles in his signature fashion. He realized that his hobby could become a career.

Cirillo said he’s careful to keep the brand shoots minimal by sticking to pitches he believes in. He’s done recent campaigns with Adidas and Gucci. But he’s wary of diluting his brand's value by taking too many commercial offers.

“Johnny’s whole thing is to inspire, ignite, spark and enjoy,” said L’Amour Supreme, an artist who Cirillo has photographed twice. “There’s no hierarchy about it.”

Rebekah Ambjor got to know Cirillo in the neighborhood as their kids played together in McGolrick Park.

“He was always the person with the camera capturing the kids,” Ambjor said. “Everyone I know has one of his photos of us with our children and these wonderful moments, we’ve all framed them.”

Ambjor said Cirillo’s genuine enthusiasm has been the key to his success.

“Johnny just loves people’s style,” she said. “As a person who grew up in a small town in the middle of America, you think ‘Where are the rest of the freaks like me?’ And then you move to New York City and someone sees you and says ‘I love what you’re doing, keep doing this.’ That’s what Johnny’s doing, he’s building everybody up.”

The page's critics mostly take exception with the styles and neighborhoods that Cirillo highlights.

“Everyone is over-stylized and looks like they just walked out of Urban Outfitters,” said one commenter on a Reddit thread titled Am I the only one who really hates watchingnewyork? “I mean, it’s fitting for Williamsburg, which is basically a gift shop.”

“All he posts are the Gen Z version of hipsters. It’s so boring,” commented another user.

Comments on another thread accused the account of staging photos or featuring the same people over and over.

Cirillo conceded that some people may be gunning for a cameo on his Instagram – a few have even messaged his account to say that they walked by a few times that day and were disappointed he never took their picture.

“People know that their lives can be changed by social media,” Cirillo said.

He also noted that more and more people have begun to tire of influencers like him who regularly create content on the streets, such as the “what are you listening to” guys, the “what do you do for a living” guys and the “how did you two meet” guys.

The other day he stopped a woman for her photograph and she declined, saying she’d had her picture taken 10 times that day. “I was like, ‘Wait, please!’ but she just put her headphones back on and walked away,” Cirillo said.

But Cirillo remains undeterred, and said the great reactions outnumber the bad. He recalled photographing a couple of sisters from India a few years ago.

It turned out they and all of their friends followed @WatchingNewYork and were visiting New York with hopes of running into him.

“It never dawned on me that the account was reaching that far,” Cirillo said. “I thought that was really cool.”