Graphic designer Fallon Kesicier has installed New York's "largest Pride flag" on the steps of the Louis Kahn-designed Four Freedoms State Park to celebrate Pride Month.
Large decals, or stickers, temporarily adorn the 24 granite steps that lead to the island's Four Freedoms monument on Roosevelt Island, which was designed by late American architect Louis Kahn in 1973.
Fallon Kesicier designed the Ascend With Pride installation for the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy – the non-profit organisation that operates the park – for this year's WorldPride in NYC.
Kesicier's colourful installation, billed as the city's "largest Pride flag", has transformed the steps into a backdrop ripe for photographers and Instagram users.
Every four steps feature one of six different colours of the LGBTQ+ Pride flag, originally designed and created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker. From the base of the steps at ground level, they appear as one large flag measuring 3.5 metres high by 30 metres wide.
Kahn, the architect for projects such as the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut, designed the triangular shaped park for the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. He died before the construction was completed almost 40 years later, following delays caused by funding and political issues.
The conservancy noted Kahn's philosophy of inclusionary architecture that is apropos for this installation: "Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love".
Located in the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, the park and island were named after former US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the famous Four Freedoms speech he delivered in 1941.
The freedoms Roosevelt called for – freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – also reflect the LGBTQ+ community's "continued fight for universal human rights", the conservancy added.
"FDR Four Freedoms State Park's Pride flag installation serves as both a symbol of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community and a reminder of the collective progress still needed to achieve these four freedoms for all," the conservancy continued.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots – a series of demonstrations and protests carried out in June 1969 in response to the police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. These riots sparked the modern Gay Liberation Movement.
Pride Month takes place every year in June in celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, non-binary, asexual, polysexual, genderqueer and gender-variant.
Sponsored by Bloomberg, Ascend With Pride is an Official Event of Stonewall 50/ WorldPride 2019 and is open daily, aside from Tuesdays, from 14 June to 30 June.
A number of designers and brands, such as Nike, Converse and IKEA, have also launched a series of new products to celebrate Pride this month.
Photography by Nick Reid, unless stated otherwise.