The photos on top of his folding table were dusty and haunting, and the colors had faded from exposure to the sun. Yet there was something vibrant in the stares of the New Yorkers in the images. The tall brunette with the European accent brushed her fingers across the frayed photographs. “Do you know how it works?” Cuevas asked her.

It is called Polaroid-transfer, and Cuevas sells his photos outside the Guggenheim Museum across Fifth Avenue from Central Park. The 35-year-old artist from East New York snaps a photo with a circa 1960s Polaroid Land Camera. But instead of the plastic Polaroid photo paper, he develops the photo onto rough-cut watercolor paper, dipping the film into processing fluid sitting next to his camera. The entire process takes about two minutes and the result is an instant photo with a timeless look. Cuevas charges $15 per photo.

There were no takers on a recent spring afternoon but tourists streaming out of the Guggenheim wandered over to make small talk.

Cuevas likes the energy of the “Nueva York” streets. He splits his time between the spot in front of the Guggenheim and a corner in SoHo, on Greene and Spring streets.  He greets the dog walkers and parents with strollers who pass his table in front of the museum. He likes the never-ending fashion show that is SoHo streets. New York can be understood just by studying the way people walk down the street, he said.

But his favorite part of selling photos is taking a photo that delights his subject.

Sometimes people leave him more than $15 because they like their photos so much. He likes to think that, perhaps, he is giving people something more than just a photograph.

When he was 9 or 10 years old, his mother paid a street photographer to snap him and his sister at a Mexico City market. “I don’t know if it was the same camera. It could’ve been the same camera,” he mused.

He still owns that photo, and, for him, it marks an invisible line between who he was then and who he is now. He said he hopes that some of his photos would have the same resonance for his subjects.

“I like taking photos of the children because I think, 'What if that photo lasts many years?' ” Cuevas said. “When that child grows up, he can look at the photo and say, ‘Oh I remember when me and my mother took a photo in New York, there was this crazy man …’ ”