Smiling Faces Sometimes by Pia Dehne features 272 candid black and white portraits of people she photographed with a Yashika T4 camera in the early 2000’s, mainly at Passerby, a short lived bar on 15th Street, Chelsea gallery openings and parties in NYC. The photos were made shortly before and after September 11th and document a fleeting moment in time when the Downtown art scene felt like a safe harbor and partying was a necessary act of bonding. Pia Dehne captures intimate moments in these portraits which reflect an innocent mixture of pure joy, foolishness, despair and loneliness, reflecting complex undercurrents of the era. The book also includes fragments of song lyrics from bands that sang about NYC, in a cut-up literary style, as developed by William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin and the Dadaists before them, adding another layer to a nearly forgotten time.