What better way to pay homage to a place then by telling the stories of the people who live and create there? Filmmaker and photographer Dustin Cohen is trying to do just that with his video series "Made in Brooklyn."
"Focusing things on a local level really made the most sense to me," he said. "When you look at the project as a whole, and as more and more videos get made, I think we'll have a really great, contemporary portrait of Brooklyn."
The first installment of the series is "The Violin Maker," which follows Samuel Zygmuntowicz, a middle-aged man who has been building the string instruments since he was 13. The video profiles the artisan as he crafts a violin; whittling the wood, stretching the strings, and testing the sound. It is an intimate look into one of the many characters of Brooklyn.
"People are drawn to things that are created by an actual person and not a mysterious factory thousands of miles away," he said in an email conversation with The Huffington Post. "Getting to buy a product directly from the person making it, interacting with them, it's all part of the experience and people take a lot away from that."
Though the first video was just released, Cohen already has a slew of videos lined up, including a multigenerational shoe maker, a metal smith/jeweler, a bespoke atelier, a perfumer and a handful of artists.
Watch below for "The Violin Maker:"
The Violin Maker from Dustin Cohen on Vimeo.