02-NOV-2016
Forty-Second Street, New York City, New York, 2016
This photograph tells its story by contrasting a sea of pedestrians at the bottom of the frame to the massive display of colorfully lighted marquees that fill the rest of the shot. The image is packed with details calling attention to the attractions on display here. Every inch of this image screams for such attention. The effect is both chaotic and energetic. This is what gives the city’s Times Square area its identity and purpose, and makes the phrase "Forty-Second Street" universally understood.
02-NOV-2016
Echo, Theatre District, New York City, New York, 2016
The extended elbows of the model appearing on this ad echo the flow of the ribbons on the theatrical mask that rises in the background. I juxtapose both elements, and place them within a horizontal frame. Five horizontal bars rhythmically repeat each other as they flow through this image. They embrace both the grinning mask and smiling model and intensify the effect of the echoing horizontal elbows and ribbons. A closer look also reveals a wavy strand of lights behind the mask, providing still another echo. The background of the ad was red—a color that originally dominated the scene, and diminished the relationship of the model and mask. By converting this image to black and white, I eliminate such distraction, and shift the emphasis to the echoes and rhythms within the image.
02-NOV-2016
Choices, Eighth Avenue, New York City, New York, 2016
An array of tasty food greets the patrons of the food trucks that line many of Manhattan’s avenues.
I photographed this woman as she patiently waits for her order in heart of New York's theatre district. She seems relatively relaxed amidst an incredible range of choices. She is likely a regular customer of street cuisine. Others may be overwhelmed by the many choices pictured on nearly every surface of this truck. This image asks its viewers what they might choose if confronted with so many appealing options.
02-NOV-2016
Trophy Room, The Explorers Club, New York City, New York, 2016
This club, a professional society promoting scientific exploration and field study, was founded in 1905. It is now headquartered in a six-story mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It houses trophies and artifacts collected during more than a century of explorations by its members, some of whom were first to the North Pole, South Pole, the summit of Mt. Everest and even first to the moon. Its trophy room stands at the top of building. A painting of an Arctic explorer dominates the scene, flanked by a pair of South African Sable antelopes. Their curving horns mirror the reversed curves of the huge elephant tusks below them, just as the stuffed cheetah in the middle of the image repeats the legs of the explorer in the painting..
02-NOV-2016
Walrus, The Explorers Club, New York City, New York, 2016
This club owns priceless artifacts, collected across the face of the earth over the last 115 years. This mounted exhibit was among the most poignant. This mounted head of a long departed young walrus, stares sadly at us, just below an “exit” sign. A massive elephant tusk enters the frame at the upper left, it’s curve echoing the circular plaque of this polar trophy. The huge tusk contrasts in size to the miniature tusks of this immature walrus. I converted this photograph to black and white to make it read more symbolic than descriptive. This baby walrus has made its own exit a long time ago, and the sign above its head provides a verbal reminder of its demise. The expression on its face conveys a mixture of innocence and surprise (the small tusks and wide eyes) To a greater degree, this image reminds us that the polar explorations of the early 20th century launched an environmental challenge that remains as difficult to resolve today as it did back then.
03-NOV-2016
On Line, Theatre District, New York City, New York, 2016
New Yorkers never stand “in” lines. They stand “on” them. In this image, that “line” had dissolved into a small mob of locals and tourists awaiting a chance at free tickets for a popular television show. I stood across the street and used a long lens to make this image. When I photograph a crowd, I look for a single gesture or expression that will draw the eye to a focal point and tell a story. In this case, the story rests in the expressive hands of the woman at right. She is the only person in this shot who wears a skirt. She is standing in the foreground, and offers both an animated facial expression and an explanatory hand gesture to express her feelings. Although the woman in the pink sweater on the left provides the most vivid color in the image, it is the person to her right that carries the most meaning. She provides the idea for the photograph, while everything else offers context.
03-NOV-2016
Earlybirds, Theatre District, New York City, New York, 2016
The hit musical “Hamilton, ” well into its long Broadway run, was the still the hottest ticket in town during my 2016 visit to New York City. The show was playing just across the street from my hotel, offering me a chance to photograph its entrance at various times of day. Early one morning, I found two young women already claiming the first spots on the theatre’s front steps. They camped squarely in front of the building’s locked doors, well before the throngs of anxious potential ticket buyers would join them. Their relaxed body language contrasts to the larger than life size animated silhouettes of the 18th century Hamiltonian characters emblazoned upon the theatre's locked doors. A huge banner proclaiming the show as the “Musical of the Decade” hangs over the scene while the two women chat and the play’s symbolic characters dance behind them. The colors are symbolic as well. This hit rap musical about the turbulent life of America’s first Treasury Secretary is packaged in gold and black, the colors of power, wealth, and eventually grief.
03-NOV-2016
Phantom, Theatre District, New York City, New York, 2016
This huge poster for the musical “Phantom of the Opera, displayed behind a textured glass window, offered me a chance to create this blend of make-believe and reality. The poster featured a black background filled with lighted candelabras surrounding the main characters of the play. The street just behind me was reflected on the glass in front of the poster. I made many photographs of this reflected scene, expressing a sense of the city itself within the poster. I chose this shot, because the reflection of the yellow taxi moving through a textured sea of glowing candles incongruously compares contemporary urban life to vintage theatrical fantasy.
04-NOV-2016
City of Dreams, New York, New York, 2016
The lower half of the office building at right was being renovated. Huge temporary display panels, displaying advertisements, hide the work. The largest panel promotes an adventure movie, featuring a young hero brandishing what appears to be a magic wand. I contrast this massive ad to the array of old and new skyscrapers looming around it. The building at left, now a posh hotel, was built in the 19th century. Its peaked roof and tiny windows offer us a dreamlike vision of a long vanished world, lost within a sea of modern glass. The incongruously ad is pure fantasy, while the background offers a varied look at a city in constant change. By converting this image to black and white, the advertisement blends with the buildings and becomes part of that change. It is as if the young man with the wand is creating this dream-like scene for us.
03-NOV-2016
Selfie, Times Square, New York City, New York, 2016
Selfies have become so popular that rows of plastic recliners now await tourists visiting Times Square. They enable visitors to make pictures of themselves, seen in the context of Times Square, from a dramatically low position. This fellow seems as if he has entered a trance-like state, mesmerized by the image of himself displayed on the screen of his cell phone. A row of diagonal recliners fills much of the frame. His reclining form offers a powerful blue diagonal. Meanwhile, his thrusting arms, holding an upright camera, offer a contrasting diagonal counterpoint.
03-NOV-2016
Under the masks, Times Square, New York City, New York, 2016
A few moments before I made this image, these were costumed cartoon characters that happily glided and danced among the tourists thronging Times Square, creating a festive mood, and ultimately requesting tips for such services. Eventually all good things must come to an end. The party has ended, and now reality rules. In this mage, we can see that those happy masks have been replaced by life as it is -- these people are paid to work , and work is not always fun. I converted the color image to black and white in order to remove as much festivity as possible, and allow us to focus on what lies beneath those masks.
02-NOV-2016
Spectacle, New York City, New York, 2016
In the fall of 2016, this seven-story high advertisement, superimposed upon the façade of an apartment building, created a surreal incongruous spectacle high over Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue. I built this image by comparing the building’s tiny windows to the massive face of a model wearing sunglasses with tiny circles on them. At the time, I did not have a context for this advertisement. I was simply making a picture of another picture, albeit an incongruous, enormous, mystifying image, bathed in vivid red paint, and splashed with dappled sunlight. I eventually learned that the sunglasses featured in this ad represent a fashion-inspired technology product known as “Spectacles.” It is marketed to young people, encouraging them to make ten-second videos with a tiny camera embedded in the frame, and then upload these videos to social media media app “Snapchat.” The circle on the left corner of the sunglasses is the lens of this video camera, while the circle at right lights up and rotates to warn others that they are being recorded. The model’s massive fingers are presumably triggering a video. (A sampling of video clips made with these “Spectacles” can be seen on YouTube. They fall far short of the product’s ambitious title.)
03-NOV-2016
The Lonely Bust, The Brill Building, New York City, New York, 2016
This building, once the center of the center of New York’s popular music industry, features a magnificent Art Deco façade over its main entrance. Its polished brass decoration speaks symbolically of the importance of the structure. It implies wealth, stability and importance. The rhythmic bars that seem to move up and down in unison can even be seen as a symbol of the music that once was created within.
However the most important detail in this 1931 façade is the incongruously lonely bust of a well-dressed young man placed within the niche at its center. The entire Art Deco embellishment revolves around this bust. It strikes a comparatively somber note when seen in the context of such energetic gleaming brass. When I later researched the Brill Building, I learned that this bust was placed there in memory of the building developer’s son, who had died of anemia at the age of just 17, while the building was being built. Once we have this context, the entire image changes its meaning. Instead of energy, nostalgia, and beauty, we see a memorial to a lost child.
04-NOV-2016
Derailed, New York City, New York, 2016
This graffiti-laden New York City subway car looked quite out of place standing in the middle of an office building’s empty lobby. And that’s why I made this image. It is seen completely out of its context. The wheels have vanished. It made its last run many years ago. I have no idea how it came to this place. The lobby itself was obviously not in use. It seemed utterly surreal, not only in life, but in this image as well. I made this picture through the lobby’s window. There were reflections of people coming from behind me. They are seen here as symbolic ghostly subway riders -- entering through a ramp at right, and exiting through a glass door at left. The primary colors are warm: rich blue walls, dusty yellowish-brown floor, vivid blue and red graffiti on the car. All combine to lend a nostalgic mood to this incongruous image.
18-OCT-2013
Le Carousel, Bryant Park, New York City, New York, 2013
Bryant Park is nestled in a canyon of skyscrapers, just behind the New York Public Library. It is an oasis of lawns, gardens, promenades, and trees, a place where thousands of nature-starved office workers gather for lunch whenever the weather is warm and dry. I found its most charming asset to be a small carousel, inhabited by fourteen classical carousel creatures. I made this image in early morning light. The carousel is not yet at work – the day has hardly begun and the still figures within are visible only through the plastic windows of its protective draping. The warm light filters through the plastic, gilding one of its horses, and illuminating the folds of the green drapes that surround the animal. The effect is nostalgic, a romantic homage to both European and American merry-go-rounds.
16-OCT-2013
Alone, Mall entrance, Columbus Circle, New York City, New York, 2013
Waves of morning commuters rise from the subways below to crowd this part of Columbus Circle. Yet I found this person standing utterly alone at this moment. I caught her in between commuter surges, standing before a shopping mall entrance as she checks her messages on a cellular phone. It is an incongruous situation, and I made sure to include just enough of the sidewalk, parking barricades, mall entrance, and overhead glass awning to turn this vast area into her own private office. The colorful yellow coat contrasts to the monochromatic cement, aluminum and glass which surround her. Both before and after I made this photo, chaos reigned. But at this instant, she has this part of Columbus Circle all to herself.
16-OCT-2013
Rush hour, Columbus Circle, New York City, New York, 2013
I stood at the head of the steps leading up from the New York City Subway, photographing the crowds of rush hour commuters as they flowed swiftly past me. I built this particular image around the woman carrying the brilliantly colored dark red and yellow tote bag. She wears a trench coat, which further differentiates her from the swarm of people that surges towards us. Using a 24mm wideangle focal length, I pressed the shutter just as the man in front of her left my frame. Clutching a cup of coffee, she follows in his wake. Her impassive expression projects a sense of determination and perhaps a hint of concern. Commuters retrace these steps five days a week. She seems to know each one by heart.
16-OCT-2013
Maine Monument, Columbus Circle, New York City, New York, 2013
The Maine Monument stands at Merchant’s Gate, the main entrance to Central Park. Built at the turn of the last century, the monument commemorates the lives of 266 American sailors killed when the battleship US Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 1898. This monument features an ornately gilded statue on its top, but I chose to photograph just one of the four allegorical figures at its base. The figure hosts no fewer than ten pigeons at this moment, an incongruous gesture of hospitality from such a noble sculpture. The surrounding scuptures add context, as does the hull of stylized ship coming right at us. I processed the image in an antique sepia tone, reminiscent of photographs from the 1890s. (The sculptor, Attilio Piccirilli, is known as well for carving the handsome pediment of the New York Stock Exchange, which I also photographed for this gallery. View it at:
http://www.pbase.com/image/110782384)
16-OCT-2013
Farewell to Roseland, New York City, New York, 2013
The very day I returned home from this trip to New York, I saw an article in the New York Times reporting that the famous Roseland Ballroom, a club in Midtown Manhattan where generations of bands have performed since 1919, would be closing later this year. Without knowing this, I had earlier made this image of Roseland’s striking painted façade, featuring a single tourist leaning on a barrier as she waits to photograph one of the many celebrities that often appear in New York’s theatre district. The tourist is small, quiet and patient, which provides an incongruous comparison in scale and attitude to the monumental mural filled with vivid primary colors and the energetic symbolic hands of silhouetted Roseland customers. New York is always changing, and now Roseland, which once hosted the likes of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Sting, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, and Beyoncé, appears ready to close its doors.
16-OCT-2013
One among the many, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2013
Grand Central Terminal is more than a railroad station. It is an iconic New York landmark. For exactly 100 years, it has been the largest railroad station in the world, covering 48 acres and hosting more than 65 tracks along its platforms. Its historic grandeur has made it the world’s sixth most visited tourist attraction, drawing more than 20 million visitors a year. I made this image of its main concourse just prior to rush hour. While dozens of visitors and commuters swirl about its famous four sided clock and information desk, I’ve built this photograph around a single person – the woman who strides in front of the illuminated patch of marble that glows in the center of the image. Head down, she seems oblivious to everything – the crowds, the history, and the lavish grand scale of the place. By removing the vast upper reaches of the terminal from my frame, I strengthened the emphasis on the sole woman walking before the pool of light. Finally, I darkened the image slightly to increase the contrast between the one among the many.
17-OCT-2013
The underpass, Central Park, New York City, New York, 2013
The shadows within this underpass provide a medium of abstraction, allowing me to lead the eye directly to a silhouetted woman who is walking her dog. She has just about emerged from the other end of the underpass. I catch her as she seems to look towards a small figure in black striding among the distant trees. There is an energy flowing between the figures, large and small. The image reflects a personal moment in time, a private place in the midst of a great city. It is also an incongruous study in space, limited to a chance pairing of just two of the park’s thirty-five million visitors each year. Yet it gives us an understanding of why this place is the most visited urban park in the United States.
17-OCT-2013
Displaced, Central Park, New York City, New York, 2013
The character of Central Park has changed dramatically over past 50 years. In the 60s and 70s, the city itself was experiencing economic and social changes, and the park decayed along with it. Years of poor management and inadequate maintenance turned this masterpiece of landscape architecture into a deteriorated dustbowl and a danger zone by night. Vandalism was rife. The park turned around in the 1980s, under the leadership of The Central Park Conservancy, a private, non-profit organization that manages the park for the city. The park has been reborn, and is now considered safe. There is a 1:00 am curfew in effect. Yet there are still a few homeless people who sleep below its trees. The park police do their best to discourage them from hanging around, largely for aesthetic reasons, rather than as a matter of safety or crime. When I walked through the interior of the park at 8:00 am in the morning, I saw several homeless men, including this pair, carting their bags of belongings out of the park. Their vividly colored backpacks and carts incongruously contrast to the lush canopy overhead.
17-OCT-2013
30 Rock, New York City, New York, 2013
Barry Faulkner’s striking art deco mosaic mural “Intelligence Awakening Mankind” seems invisible to the steady flow of people walking below it. Yet a careful look at this image will show at least one person in this scene using her intelligence -- a woman stands studying a document between a pair of potted shrubs, braced against the wall of Rockefeller Center’s GE Building. This is the Sixth Avenue entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, home to NBC’s studios. Built in 1933, this skyscraper is the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center. It was known as the RCA Building until 1988. Today the 70 story building is often called by its nickname “30 Rock,” based on an NBC TV show.
17-OCT-2013
Times Square, New York City, New York, 2013
Once known as The Great White Way, Times Square is the worlds most visited tourist attraction. Approximately a third of a million people pass through Times Square daily. 40 million people a year come to gawk at its garish advertising “spectaculars,” and to patronize its shops, restaurants, hotels, theatres and various attractions. In this wideangle image, I offer a study of the heart of the square, the spot that once hosted the structure that gave the place its name – the old New York Times building. The Times has since moved, and its former building has become Two Times Square. It is now almost completely covered with illuminated ads, rendering the once famous “news crawl” sign at the bottom, a formerly iconic New York symbol, nearly invisible. The building across the street reflects the colorfully chaotic scene back at us. Even the square's famous pigeons make an appearance here – at least eleven of them cling to a wire leading in to my image from the right. The scene pulses with energy, intensified by the diagonal lines and primary colors.
17-OCT-2013
At Liberty, Times Square, New York, 2013
This street performer, a living version of New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty, incongruously shows off a pair of sunglasses in one of the Times Square pedestrian plazas. Although nobody seems to notice the performance at the moment, this "living statue" may still be turning a profit. While one hand holds both a mini-torch and an American flag, the other hand may be pocketing dollars, euros, and yen.
17-OCT-2013
Lunch at Lindy’s, New York City, New York, 2013
Lindy’s was originally a famous New York deli, opening in 1921 and nationally known for its cheesecake. It closed in 1957, and reopened about twenty years later under a new management in two Manhattan locations. These diners prefer to ignore the window ad promoting Lindy’s abundant Sunday Brunch, and instead concentrate their attention on whatever might be flying overhead at this moment.
17-OCT-2013
Lunch outdoors, New York City, New York, 2013
Highlighted by bright yellow umbrellas against a green background of polished marble, this image compares and contrasts simultaneous dining activity from table to table. While the three people in the foreground may either be waiting for service or are finished eating, most of the customers in the background seem to be actively pursuing a drink or meal. Two of the tables in the background feature interaction as well. The yellow umbrellas add a festive touch to the scene, while the marble wall brings a sense of quality to an urban dining experience. Even the empty chairs in the middle of the picture play a role. They can symbolize loneliness within a crowd, a common theme in urban scenes such as this one.
18-OCT-2013
Trump Tower, Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York, 2013
The façade of this 58-story skyscraper offers a cubistic pattern of gold and copper reflections, clad in blue shadows. Much depends on the height and angle of the sun itself here. It is the color of the sun-splashed building on the opposite side of Fifth Avenue that creates the colors. The Trump Tower, built in the 1980s, symbolizes wealth, power, and glitz. These reflections do justice to its reputation.
18-OCT-2013
Grooming the Rolls, New York City, New York, 2013
I abstract the front end of a parked Rolls Royce by exposing for the colored reflections on the window, plunging the hood, grill, and wheel of this luxury automobile into deep shadow. Only the highlights survive. The shadowy figure of a man can be seen working on the other side of the car, readying it for its next assignment. The striking triangular highlight in the background acts as an arrow, pointing directly to the spot where the driver will sit. Rolls Royce and Bentley automobiles are powerful symbols of extreme wealth and power. They are expensive to buy, own, rent, maintain, groom, and garage. There are many such cars on the streets of Manhattan. This image, full of shadows and mystery, expresses the mystique inherent in such symbols.
19-OCT-2013
Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, 2013
One of America’s first rural cemeteries, Green-Wood was founded in 1838. Today it is in the middle of Brooklyn -- 478 acres of tombs, hills, valleys, sculpture, greenery, and history. Its 560,000 permanent residents include Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Horace Greeley. In 1776, Battle of Long Island was fought among its hills. I made this image just as the overhead branches were turning color. The orange canopy of dying leaves provides both a colorful and symbolic context to the ornate splendor of the Victorian tombs arrayed below it.
19-OCT-2013
A brace of angels, Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, 2013
Green-Wood Cemetery offers one of the most important collections of funerary art in the United States. This mausoleum is just one of the exquisite examples. I cropped the top of the tomb to draw the eye of the viewer towards the door. The colors change from green to gold to gray and blue as the eye moves through the image. The scene is rich in symbolism. A brace of angels guards the intricately designed doorway to eternity. While the elegant metalwork symbolizes wealth, it also suggests the hope of eternal rest, while the gradual browning of the surrounding landscape symbolizes mortality.
30-JUL-2011
Chaos, Midtown, New York City, New York, 2011
I shot this image from a taxicab window as it moved slowly through the midtown Manhattan traffic. A jumble of advertisements and buildings, the scene is surreal. It is difficult to see where the advertising ends and reality begins, an apt metaphor for the chaos that often seems to characterize Manhattan.
31-JUL-2011
Daily News Garage, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The former Brooklyn Garage of the New York Daily News appears as a relic from another age. Its peeling façade is streaked with rust, gradually enveloping the newspapers logo, which features an archaic Speed Graphic camera. Built in 1900, and closed in 1994, the former delivery truck garage was recently reborn as an 18,000 square foot rock climbing gym. Is owners purposely retained the newspapers rusting logo, hoping its provenance would help draw customers.
02-AUG-2011
Water Mural, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
A towering four-story mural, telling the story of how New York City gets its water, looms over Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue. The mural, completed in 2008, was sponsored by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and produced by the Groundswell Community Mural project. My image of this mural expresses two different aspects of protection – the mural itself urges viewers to protect and conserve water, while the chain link, barbed-wire fence that diagonally slashes through it protects the mural itself and expresses the nature of urban life.
02-AUG-2011
Pause, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
This delivery truck had stopped in heavy traffic on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue. I photographed the driver’s body language as he waited out the delay, abstracting him through backlighting, and filling the background with the urban landscape itself. His gesture speaks of patience and thought.
01-AUG-2011
Breaking the chains, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Part of massive mural known as “Great Walls: Justice Everywhere,” these huge fists dwarf pedestrians walking by them on Park Slope’s DeGraw Street. They symbolize a job-training program for ex-prison inmates. The mural, created by New York City’ Groundswell Community Mural Projects, salutes the program, an effort of South Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue Committee – an economic and social justice community organization. The symbolic fists dominate the image and the wall itself. Incongruously, the pedestrians in my image seem utterly oblivious to them.
31-JUL-2011
Primary colors, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Yellow and blue are primary colors. This yellow truck was parked along Brooklyn’s Third Avenue. I knew that if waited, I would be able to find a blue background as traffic flowed past it. It was only a matter of a minute or two until a bus bearing a blue advertisement passed the truck. Amazingly, the ad also featured trapeze artists that caught just as they flew over the window of the parked truck. The result is a strikingly incongruous image, featuring contrasting primary colors and an improbable subject relationship.
02-AUG-2011
Convergence, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
New York’s buildings often speak with their walls, as well as with their architecture. In this image, two eras collide on at a Brooklyn intersection. A contemporary public art mural salutes a community jobs project on one corner, while an early 20th century tile company proclaims its wares on the other. The colors seem complimentary, and somehow bridge the huge gap in time.
02-AUG-2011
Anonymous, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
I’ve layered this image in vestiges of urban life. The lean of a safety pylon draws the eye to the pair of pedestrians crossing paths before a shuttered shop. The pair of painted street markings in the foreground echo the pace of the people passing each other just above them. The geometric shadow on the corrugated shutter embraces the pedestrians as well. They see neither the festive primary colors that hang above them, nor each other. The image expresses the pervasive sense of anonymity that characterizes this vast city.
02-AUG-2011
The court, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The extravagant graffiti on a brick wall overwhelms the faded and degraded basketball backboard that rises above it. The inhabitants of this neighborhood have left their mark on both, creating a contrasting definition of urban life on the streets of Brooklyn.
01-AUG-2011
Urban oasis, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
A local coffee and ice cream shop provides a gathering place for this group of friends. My wideangle focal length stresses the advertisement on the wall at right, featuring a cup of juice that links the eye to the pair of circular cups on the window in the background. The cool surroundings offer a pleasant summer retreat from the streets of a steaming city.
31-JUL-2011
Doorways, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The doorways of the industrial neighborhoods of South Brooklyn reflect the coarse texture of this part of New York City. Graffiti has claimed the door at left, and it has not been removed. The artist who embellished the door at right apparently once intended a nod to his ethnicity, yet the partially veiled Muslim figure now seems to be slowly crumbling into the material of the door itself. Defiant graffiti scrawled below a no parking sign has claimed ownership of this door as well.
31-JUL-2011
The Gardens of Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. Most consider South Brooklyn’s infamous Gowanus Canal to be an eyesore, a polluted blight. Once the nation’s busiest commercial canal, it has now fallen on hard times. It is toxic, and often smells of sewage. Its depths conceal mercury, lead, coal tar, and other contaminants. Urban legends call it a Mafia dumping ground – one novelist noted that it is “the only body of water in the world that is 90 per cent guns.” Yet there can be a haunted beauty to the place – the graffiti that marks its banks verges on the spectacular, and the ivy climbing its chain link fencing makes us see a garden amidst the decay. And that is what I envisioned when I made this image.
31-JUL-2011
Lonely landmark, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The 1873 headquarters of the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company was the earliest known concrete building in New York City. Once regarded as one of the most elegant structures in Brooklyn, the building was virtually forgotten during the 20th century. In 2006, it was designated a New York City landmark. Today it stands as a lonely sentinel on the corner of a vast empty lot, slated to become part of Brooklyn’s first Whole Foods shopping complex. I found graffiti covering its base, the elegant entrance boarded up and incongruously decorated, and its staircase crumbling. Whole Foods claims its new store will jog around the old landmark, and the company will eventually repair its roof and exterior. Meanwhile, its erosion continues.
02-AUG-2011
Crossing, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The upper part of massive mural known as “Great Walls: Justice Everywhere,” symbolizes cultural opportunities for the residents of this inner city South Brooklyn neighborhood. The mural, created by New York City’ Groundswell Community Mural Projects, is colorful even in the deep shade, and draws scale and strength from the traffic lights that I layer before it in my image. The lights are a metaphor for a crossing, a place of decision. The mural illuminates the opportunities that await such decisions.
01-AUG-2011
Brownstone, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The texture of the peeling paint in this image of a vintage Brooklyn brownstone offers viewers a tactile insight into the passage of time itself. The low angle of the early morning light intensifies that texture, and warms the rich color which envelopes half the image. By contrasting the warmth of one side of this building with the chilly, deeply shadowed half, we can ponder the unknown side of this structure, and wonder about the inhabitants this building may have known over the years.
31-JUL-2011
Public art at the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The decaying neighborhood around South Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is slowly being reclaimed. Only a few yards from the Canal’s landmark 1889 Carroll Street Bridge, one of just four retractable bridges left in the United States, a massive concrete wall has been fashioned into a work of public art, stressing the importance of literacy. The artwork has been either enhanced or defaced by an overlay of colorful graffiti, depending upon the viewer’s point of view. I layer the image with a screen of heavy weeds, symbolizing the extent of the work that lies ahead for the area’s residents.
02-AUG-2011
Doing business, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Surrounded by supplies, equipment, memorabilia, and menus, a café proprietor tracks his business minute by minute. In case any of his customers might wonder where they are, the neon sign on the wall will let them know. Above it is a framed photograph of Ebbets Field, former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Below the Brooklyn sign is a framed poster featuring Ruth Orkin’s 1951 iconic street photograph “American Girl in Italy,”
Meanwhile the proprietor pays no heed to any of it – he seems totally absorbed in his task.
31-JUL-2011
Memorial, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Three stories tall, this memorial mural at a Brooklyn intersection is part of a community tribute to 28 pedestrians killed by cars between 1995 and 2007 in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood. I abstracted the mural by showing only one third of it – the section at the corner that remembers four-year-old James Rice, who was hit by a car speeding around another corner a block from where this mural now stands. The driver who killed Rice received a ticket for failure to yield. The huge figure of Rice holds up a traffic symbol urging respect for pedestrians. I made this image as a flesh and blood pedestrian paused at the corner below the mural. He was wearing a blue shirt, which virtually matched the ghostly color of the child in the mural above him. I use scale incongruity here to tell my own story: the needless killing of a small boy should loom much larger in our memory than the parade of ordinary day-to-day happenings on the streets of Brooklyn. Drivers who see this memorial through their car windows will not only slow down – they may even think about the nature of mutual respect and the safe sharing of streets.
09-JUL-2010
Celebration, Wall Street, New York City, New York, 2010
Two fifers salute the Fourth of July during a reading of the Declaration of Independence in front of Federal Hall at Wall and Nassau Streets. Behind them loom the incongruously large bronze feet of George Washington, who was inaugurated on this spot in 1789.
10-JUL-2010
Angel, New York City, New York, 2010
The character of a building is often found in its detail. I spotted this small angel flying whimsically over the gated entry to a ground floor apartment in midtown Manhattan. I made this image of it just as the reflection of a passing New York appeared in the window, lending a sense of place to the scene.
16-JUL-2010
Lunch break, Madison Square Park, New York City, New York, 2010
Sitting on a bench alongside of New York City’s Madison Square Park, a man puts aside his cane and his packages to watch the passing parade of New Yorkers on lunch break. He must seem invisible to the two businessmen as they pass him by. The man energetically leading the way is speaking. He gestures forcefully, yet he does not glance at either the man he is talking to, or the man who looks at him from the bench. I made this photograph with a wideangle lens at very close range. None of these men saw me as I made this street photograph – their attention is elsewhere. There are multiple contrasts here – the man on the bench is dressed differently than the others -- he sits, while the businessmen walk past him at full stride. They also express variation in attitude and lifestyle. Yet all three of them still manage to share a common moment here. My lens captures and juxtaposes them incongruously in both space and time. As viewers, we are left to imagine what the speaker might be saying, and what the others are thinking as he speaks.
17-JUL-2010
Chanin Building, New York City, New York, 2010
Built by Irwin S. Chanin in 1929, this art deco 56-story skyscraper, initially a dominant landmark of the midtown skyline, was soon eclipsed by the Chrysler Building just across 42nd Street at Lexington Avenue. What gives the Chanin Building its identity are the spectacular bronze panels that embrace the base of the building. In this close up, I incongruously compare the stylized floral design on one of those panels to a plant that thrives within an office just above it.
13-JUL-2010
Architectural contrast, New York City, New York, 2010
The new academic building of New York’s Cooper Union stands in sharp contrast to the 19th Century brownstone just next door. The new building, which houses the university’s schools of engineering and art, was designed by Thom Mayne and completed in 2009. I made this image from the triangular park just in front of the university’s original home, which stands just across Third Avenue from this pair of buildings. It was in the Great Hall of the school’s original building that Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Cooper Union speech, leading to his nomination in 1860. By contrasting the architecture on this street corner, I express the growth of not only this venerable institution, but also the astounding changes in New York as a city over the last 150 years.
17-JUL-2010
Taxis at Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2010
It seems as if seven out of every eight vehicles in midtown Manhattan are taxis. At least that’s the case in this image, where southbound Park Avenue traffic wraps around Grand Central Terminal as it flows downtown. I use a very long telephoto lens (400mm) to compress the stream of vehicles, focusing on the Terminal and the statue of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt that stands before it. The double yellow line on the street echoes the colors of the taxis and draws the eye deep into the image.
17-JUL-2010
The News Building, New York City, New York, 2010
The News Building was built in 1929, and was the home of the New York Daily News until the mid 1990s. The art deco skyscraper, soaring 476 feet over 42nd Street, served as the model for the headquarters of the fictional Daily Planet, where Superman worked as Clark Kent. I was primarily interested in expressing its character and era by moving in on the wonderful mural carved into the concrete over the front door of the building. I layer the image by including one of the floral baskets that hang from lampposts over the 42nd Street sidewalk. It is useful to compare my approach here to a more descriptive image of the same subject, as published in Wikipedia’s entry on the building. By moving closer and shooting upwards, my expression of the scene offers detail and emphasis that is not available to us in the literal image which can be seen at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NY_Daily_News_door_jeh.JPG
15-JUL-2010
Frustration and patience, New York City, New York, 2010
Instead of only shooting the flow of evening traffic here on Fifth Avenue, which is full of color and energy, I focus instead on five people trying to hail taxis, and use the colorful traffic flow as my context. The resulting image is full of energy yet also frustration, because it appears that all of the taxis that are approaching have their roof lights off, which means they either full or off duty and are not going to stop for any of these people. The body language here suggests patience and resignation – only one of the five people can make the effort to raise an arm to hail a taxi, and that’s the man at right whose arm is half-heartedly upright in mock salute.
16-JUL-2010
Coffee drinker, New York City, New York, 2010
I caught this man, cup of coffee raised to his lips, striding past a huge fast food coffee advertisement, and added the subway signage at left as a primary foreground layer to suggest a sense of place. This image took about fifteen minutes to find, and numerous false attempts to create. I liked the powerful graphics in the coffee advertisement as a background, and more importantly, it was in shadow. So was the subway entrance. The area between them was illuminated by morning light, which vividly emphasized anyone passing between the advertisement and the subway entrance. I photographed numerous people as they moved through that lighted area, using my burst mode to freeze them in mid-stride within the dark area of the poster between the two coffee cups. Many of the people had just emerged from this fast food shop with coffee in their hands, but only this man was actively enjoying his at the instant I shot.
15-JUL-2010
Louis Vuitton Fifth Avenue store, New York, NewYork, 2010
The famous French fashion house, founded in 1854, sells luxury luggage and leather goods, along with shoes, watches, sunglasses, and books. It has a prominent place on New York’s Fifth Avenue, home to most of the major fashion shops in the city. I photographed it at night, creating an essence by abstracting the building down to this silhouetted stairway linking its floors, featuring a silhouetted mannequin carrying an LV bag framed in a doorway. The brand acquires a mysterious note here, aided by the lush colors of the purple geometry and the mesh grid that helps abstract the scene.
17-JUL-2010
Noon, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2010
The massive 13-foot wide clock on the façade of Grand Central Terminal is flanked by three huge statues, which made up the largest sculptural group in the world when created by French sculptor Jules-Alexis Coutan in 1914. I use a 400mm telephoto lens to zoom up to the spectacular clock and catch the minute hand just as it crawled past noon. I cropped the statue on top of the clock -- winged Mercury -- out of this picture, as well as Minerva, who sits to its right. I include only Hercules, who seems to be relaxing from his labors at noon, perhaps even thinking about lunch.
15-JUL-2010
Waiting her turn, Third Avenue, New York City, New York, 2010
Rush hour taxis are not easily found in New York City. You have to know where exactly where to position yourself to grab one before someone else beats you to it. It’s a matter of experience and assertiveness. In this case, I noticed two women were going for the same cab making its way up Third Avenue. One of them, in silhouette, had the nerve to dart off the sidewalk in the middle of the block to nab this cab, while the woman in the foreground was still patiently waiting for it at the intersection. Meanwhile, the Third Avenue bus reaches the intersection at the same time. The loser of this context boarded it and due to the heavy traffic, probably reached her destination along the avenue at the same time that cab would have arrived there.
17-JUL-2010
Summer walk, Park Avenue, New York City, New York, 2010
Four friends walk side by side up Park Avenue, three of them clutching summery drinks in their hands. Another woman keeps pace with them, but her posture tells us that she is not part of this group. I saw them coming from several blocks away. I waited until they simultaneously reached a shaft of light on the pavement and made this image. The noon sun illuminates their shoulders as they match each other, stride for stride, and to a degree, sip for sip.
09-JUL-2010
The city that never sleeps, New York City, New York, 2010
At night, New York City becomes a study in lights. I made this wide-angle image from my window as rain clouds, tinged with orange, rolled over the illuminated skyline of midtown Manhattan. The Chrysler Building’s fiery crown may be the focal point of this image, but the glowing window at the bottom right was just as important to me. It is a rear window of a brownstone apartment building only a few yards away from my vantage point, the only window illuminated in its area. It offers a contrasting lone counter point to the massed array of lights in the skyscrapers beyond, a reminder that New York is a city that never seems to sleep.
16-SEP-2009
Banner, Park Avenue, New York City, New York, 2009
The subject is a simple one – a lamppost banner heralding an exhibition of watercolors, prints, and illuminated books of poetry by the visionary William Blake at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. I wanted to photograph the banner as if it was the embodiment of Blake and his art – ethereal and often mysterious.
I placed the banner behind a layer of branches, allowing the blue field and part of the sensuous figure to peek through. I oversaturated and underexposed my image in the post processing, creating my own tribute to this amazing talent.
18-SEP-2009
Echoes of Strand, New York City, New York, 2009
One of my favorite pictures of New York City is Paul Strand’s “Wall Street, 1915:”
In his Wall Street image, Strand juxtaposes abstracted figures of commuting workers plodding past the House of Morgan on Wall Street. They plod past the bank as robots; dwarfed in scale, and dehumanized by the very institutions they serve. In my own image, I echo the point Strand makes here about New York City. In Strand’s day, laborers were little more than subservient chattel. In our day, workers and institutions alike are decimated by financial greed. In my image, the commuting workers are larger than Strands, but similarly abstracted by the light. Instead of a bank, they plod past a sleek store window filled with robotic mannequins wearing clothes that few of them can afford. They plod along the sidewalk, some with heads bowed, just as the workers back in 1915 plodded below the black windows of the Morgan Bank. New York City is a city of great vitality. But it is also a city built on the backs of its workers, and as the 21st century dawns, those workers are feeling the pressure.
17-SEP-2009
Crossing 34th Street, New York City, New York, 2009
Much of this image is filled with the flow of the heavy traffic and massive buildings that line 34th Street, one of the busiest streets in the world. I use a long telephoto lens (400mm) to compress both the traffic and the buildings to make them seem to be even closer together. I remove the sky altogether – there is no space for the natural world in this image. As I was shooting, a woman in a long ponytail and high heels came striding across the intersection. She may seem visually overwhelmed by it all, yet she pays no heed to anything but her mission at the moment – to get across the street before the light changes. She is the only person visible in a scene where thousands work and ride unseen. Yet she almost blends in -- a metaphor for every anonymous individual caught in the swirl of urban life.
18-SEP-2009
Lost tourists, New York City, New York, 2009
It is easy to find people adrift on the streets of this city. Although the streets and avenues are numbered, such streets can confuse anyone from out of town as Broadway, which slices diagonally across the heart of the city. I found this pair of tourists standing in front of a souvenir shop on Broadway, studying their map of Manhattan with great concern. Even more important is the third party here – it seems that the Statue of Liberty is looking over their shoulder. She offers no help. This is one of those images that can only be made in the heart of Manhattan.
18-SEP-2009
A last pull, New York City, New York, 2009
The entrances to New York City’ office buildings are usually crowded with smokers taking a last pull on a cigarette before going back to work. I abstract this smoker down to just the front half of his head, an arm, and a creased hand grasping the filter between the thumb and forefinger. We are left with a flash of cuff, one closed eye and a lifetime of smoking, all of it squeezed between unyielding pillars of marble.
17-SEP-2009
Park Avenue at night, New York City, New York, 2009
I stood on a traffic island in the middle of Park Avenue for a half hour, waiting to juxtapose the silhouettes of people crossing the street against the flow of nighttime traffic. The quality of light was different on each side of the street – the traffic heading away from me was a mass of red taillights pm a dark street, while the oncoming traffic created a golden glow on the pavement. Given such a contrast in exposure, I had only one place for silhouetted pedestrians – the oncoming traffic side. I used a shutter speed of 1/15th of a second, fast enough to freeze the cars both coming and going, but slow enough to blur the silhouetted pedestrians who eventually walked into my frame. They seem so vulnerable out there in that sea of traffic, at least from my vantage point. And that is the point I was trying to make with this image.
18-SEP-2009
Curtain of glass, Park Avenue, New York City, New York, 2009
The reflections on the windows of the office structures surrounding Grand Central Terminal create a curtain of glass that looks like a soft summer rain. I cropped in on them to remove all evidence of sky in the reflections, which would have destroyed the illusion. There are four buildings involved in this image – the host building’s windows covers the entire frame, while three other buildings flow through it at left, center, and right. Each reflected building offers a different pattern and color, yet all are unified by the texture created by the host building.
28-JUL-2009
Brownstone, New York City, New York, 2009
Dappled morning light warms the façade of this 19th century brownstone in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood. The oval windows give it a pair of eyes to look back at us, while the center window is transformed by shadows into an echo of religious faith.
29-JUL-2009
Morning on Park Avenue, New York City, New York, 2009
A cross section of New Yorkers pass below the awnings of Park Avenue’s elegant apartment buildings on their way to work. They walk in both directions, passing each other without acknowledgement – an expression of urban anonymity
28-JUL-2009
Alone in a crowd, New York City, New York, 2009
On the teeming streets of Manhattan, thousands of strangers walk its sidewalks together as another working day dawns. I exposed on the bright shirt of the man, which caused the women walking alongside and just behind him to fade into darkness. He moves alone in step with the crowd, lost in his own thoughts, as he strides toward his destination. And so does everyone else.
29-JUL-2009
Bagel cart, New York City, New York, 2009
A morning bagel is a ritual for many New Yorkers. In midtown Manhattan, there are carts full of them at most major intersections. This one is at 34th Street and Park Avenue – the man who operates it seems overwhelmed by customers at the moment. By using a 400mm telephoto lens, I make the crowd around him seem even more dense and frantic.
28-JUL-2009
Madison Avenue, New York City, New York, 2009
The advent of the cell phone brings the office to every bench along midtown Manhattan’s busy streets. As this man makes his calls, weary pedestrians pass him on their way to work, while headlines scream from their boxes only a few feet away. ( To put this man into a larger context, see my image of him at
http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/115697482 )
29-JUL-2009
In a hurry, New York City, New York, 2009
This man came flying by me as I was photographing the morning rush hour at 34th Street and Madison Avenue. He wears a uniform of some kind, and carries what appears to be a cell phone in his hand. I don’t know if he is late for work or if he just likes to run instead of walk, but to me he symbolizes the pace of the city itself. It is always running to beat the clock.
18-MAR-2009
Contrails at dawn, New York City, New York, 2009
Three major airports make the New York metropolitan area the busiest transportation hub on earth. As dawn breaks over the city, I symbolize this fact by abstracting a skyline draped in a maze of fading jet contrails.
24-MAR-2009
First light, New York City, New York, 2009
Dawn does not immediately bathe Manhattan in light. The first hints of sunlight appear as patches of gold, falling on the cornices of aging brownstones flanked by immense high rises still cloaked in darkness.
24-MAR-2009
Architectural contrasts, New York City, New York, 2009
As the sun rises, patterns of warm light and stark shadow reveal form and detail that span three centuries of architectural expression. This image was made in the Murray Hill section of the city. The gleaming golden cupola tops the headquarters of The New York Life Insurance Company. A National Historic Landmark, the building was completed in 1928 and was the last significant Cass Gilbert skyscraper in Manhattan. The old church in the foreground, as well as the silhouetted chimneys, dates back to the 19th century.
24-MAR-2009
Art in the shadows, New York City, New York, 2009
A life-sized sculpture of a painter at work, frozen in mid-stroke, can be found on 34th Street near Lexington Avenue. I imply its presence here by masking it in shadow, stressing instead a determined semi-frozen commuter walking to work on a bitterly cold morning.
24-MAR-2009
Shadow dance, New York City, New York, 2009
New Yorkers seldom look down as they hustle to work in the morning. But I do – and I find the intertwined shadows of man and tree etched on a 34th street sidewalk. The city may be built of concrete, glass, and steel, but nature often finds its place as well.
24-MAR-2009
Park Avenue, New York City, New York, 2009
Bands of light and shadow paint the wall of apartment buildings that line Park Avenue as it flows though the center of Manhattan. The street is called Park Avenue because it was built over the route of a railroad cut, which was gradually covered with grates and grass. Grand Central Terminal straddles Park Avenue only few blocks north of these buildings, and as the avenue flows north, it is lined by some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
24-MAR-2009
Divine light, New York City, New York, 2009
A bit of early sun strikes the façade of a small church in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. It warms not only the church, but also the branches of a small tree that seems to yearn for light, as well as a man who gets a fleeting glimpse of it as he crosses the street. The rest of the scene, including another pedestrian, must endure the cold shadows a bit longer.
18-MAR-2009
Weather vane, St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City, New York, 2009
This church, which stands adjacent to the site of the World Trade Center, is the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City. On September 11, 2001, and for eight months thereafter, the church served as a place of rest and refuge for recovery workers at the WTC site. The church survived the collapse of the nearby twin towers without even a broken window. I abstract the church down to the golden vane that still swings with the wind atop the cupola. It points to the spot were the World Trade Center once stood.
18-MAR-2009
Near Ground Zero, New York City, New York, 2009
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the work continues on its replacement and on the development of the surrounding neighborhood. I caught a glimpse of a reflected façade through the trees not far from Ground Zero itself – it seemed to be floating in space, almost as if in a dream. My photograph of this reflection reaffirms the prevailing sentiment in this city – move on but never forget what happened here on September 11, 2001. The façade may be surrounded in darkness, yet its reflection is full of promise.
18-MAR-2009
Windows of light, New York City, New York, 2009
Morning light, bathing the skyscrapers along Manhattan’s lower Broadway in gold, is reflected in the windows of this 19th century building near City Hall Park. The classical statuary adds a dignified context to the twisted reflections in the old glass windows.
18-MAR-2009
Wall Street, New York City, New York, 2009
The intersection of Wall and Broad Streets in lower Manhattan is one of the most historic corners in the city. The site of George Washington’s first inaugural, the New York Stock Exchange, and the 1920 Wall Street bombing, the corner is a magnet for tourism. I try to express some of the turbulent activity, including the ever-present photographers, here in this early morning image. The man walking through a plume of steam, with the former J.P. Morgan building in the background, anchors my photograph. Thirty-eight people were killed in the 1920 bombing and the Morgan building was heavily damaged. Today, heavy steel gates secure the area, and the Morgan building is being converted to luxury condos.
18-MAR-2009
Pediment, New York Stock Exchange, New York City, New York, 2009
The current home of the New York Stock Exchange was opened in 1903. Its pediment features a massive marble sculpture by John Quincy Adams Ward called “Integrity Protecting the Works of Man,” – an ironic title when seen in the context of Bernard Madoff's ruinous Ponzi scam. I abstract Ward’s work, honing it down to just the two laboring figures at the far corner of his busy eleven figure sculpture complex. This enabled me to build the image around the diagonal frame that crowns the pediment of the Stock Exchange. A faint trace of safety netting can be seen covering the bodies, no doubt installed to protect pedestrians below from the potentially dangerous effects of weathering on the 106 year old sculptures.
18-MAR-2009
Restoration, New York City, New York, 2009
New York treasures its past, and is constantly restoring its vast collection of 19th and early 20th century buildings. This gathering of decorative sculptures grace a vintage building near the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. The dignitaries of the past seem at home within the scaffolding enveloping their once elegant home.
19-MAR-2009
At work near Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2009
I found this man building a scaffold on Park Avenue, a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal. By focusing on the man and his work, I emphasize his confident attitude. I use the softly focused terminal, and the MetLife building rising behind it, as background context.
19-MAR-2009
Morning rush, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2009
The gesturing commuter appears to be leading the morning charge across the marble floor of the great station. I intensify the speed of the action by using a slow shutter speed ( 1/15th of a second) and moving the camera slowly from right to left as I made the picture. This technique is called panning – it retains detail in some of the figures, yet blurs it in others. I converted the image to black and white to give the image a less realistic, more symbolic form. The original colors in this image played no part in my message.
19-MAR-2009
Conference, Grand Central Terminal, New York City, New York, 2009
Transportation provides the arterial system of a great city, and in the case of New York, Grand Central would be its metaphorical heart. Over 125,000 commuters enter and leave Manhattan each working day through this concourse. An astounding half million people visit the Terminal each day. They support over 100 businesses, among them a restaurant on the balcony of the Main Concourse known as Metrazur. Over 10,000 meals are consumed in the terminal daily, and Metrazur’s management and staff must be ready to serve its share of them. Three of those staff members were having a conference in front of the restaurant before it opened for lunch, and I photographed them from a balcony across the concourse with a long telephoto lens. I include a towering window as context, which is large enough to contain a series of walkways. A person was crossing on one of them, and I caught him just as he passed high over the heads of the conferring restaurant staff.
23-MAR-2009
125th Street Subway Station, New York City, New York, 2009
The New York subway system has 468 stations, the largest number of public transit subway stations for any system in the world. More than five million people take its trains on weekdays, and in this shot, I find three of them ascending to Broadway-Seventh Avenue Local’s elevated platform at 125th Street, near Riverside Park. The light passing through the windows abstracts the figures and illuminates the graffiti that decorates so much of New York City.
18-MAR-2009
33rd Street Subway Station, New York City, New York, 2009
The New York subway system’s annual ridership is one and half billion, ranking it behind Tokyo, Moscow, and Seoul, but ahead of Mexico City, Paris, and London. It is quickest and cheapest way, short of walking, to get around the city. With more than 6,000 subway cars in service, trains can run a few minutes apart at peak times. Here three people are waiting for a Lexington Avenue local at 33rd Street. I waited for another train to rush through the background, creating a blur of silver. Since the destruction of the World Trade Center, an American flag appears on every NYC subway car. The flags are always kept illuminated, even when off duty.
23-MAR-2009
Subway reader, New York City, New York, 2009
Like any commute, a subway journey quickly becomes routine. This man appears to be engrossed in his reading, unaware of everything else around him, including the figure in the advertisement just above him. I converted the image to black and while because it makes it timeless, and universal. Surrounded by stainless steel, still bundled against the cold, he retreats into his book.
19-MAR-2009
Bryant Park, New York City, New York, 2009
Located just behind New York’s Public Library, Bryant Park is now privately funded and managed. After falling into disrepute, the park has been renovated and now offers thousands of nature starved office workers a place to picnic every day. I found this woman enjoying a sandwich, while being watched all the while by a bronze version of the writer Gertrude Stein.
21-MAR-2009
On the Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
The Bowery, adjacent to New York’s Lower East Side, was the city’s most elegant street at the end of the 18th century. But by the time of the Civil War, its mansions and shops had given way to brothels, beer gardens, and flophouses. In the 20th century, The Bowery was known as New York’s Skid Row, a high crime, low rent area. Since the 1990s, some of it has been gentrified, and luxury condos, art museums, and upscale stores are gradually changing its face. Yet there are still ample reminders of its grim past. I made this image outside of a Bowery mission which cares for the homeless who live in the area. The body language of these men speaks for itself. My black and white rendering does likewise.
20-MAR-2009
Double-take, New York City, New York, 2009
As I was photographing this tongue in cheek advertisement in the window of a shuttered Seventh Avenue shop in Greenwich Village, a passerby whirled to take another look at it. This symbol of hard times makes a strong statement on its own, but it becomes even stronger after adding the human element.
21-MAR-2009
Coffee Shop, New York City, New York, 2009
This man was reading his newspaper about six feet away from me. I placed my camera on my table, looked down into my flip-out LCD viewfinder, and made this image without him noticing me. He seems to come from another era, the time of fast black and white film (Tri-X?). So I converted my digital image to black and white, just for old time’s sake.
22-MAR-2009
Wear and Tear, New York City, New York, 2009
I made this image from the roof deck of Lexington Avenue apartment building. The image is full of New York wear and tear – the worn, soiled arrows marking an entrance and exit to a parking area, the lowered head of the lone figure, and the well worn stepped-wall in the foreground. I initially considered converting this photograph to black and white in order to abstract it further, but the color in the shabby arrows paled into insignificance, as did the red light on the car, the orange safety cone, and the red “no parking” sign. So color it must be, and the image is all the better for it.
20-MAR-2009
Macy’s, New York City, New York, 2009
Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square has been billed as the “World’s Largest Store” since 1924, even if London’s Harrods matches the vastness of its selling space. I made this image just outside of its doors -- a customer has just made a purchase and appears to be having a phone conversation. A friend waits patiently, while Calvin Klein beckons behind their back. I was drawn to the red star on the Macy’s bag – the only real color in the photograph outside of the skin tones. It gives the image its identity and its sense of place.
21-MAR-2009
Dually blessed, New York City, New York, 2009
SoHo is a gentrified neighborhood just below Greenwich Village. Soho’s Prince Street is lined with shops, among them this clothing store. I saw the morning sun strike the outstretched hand of the sleek mannequin. It was reaching towards the woman waiting by door, as if it was blessing her. Just as I was about to shoot, a man entered my frame. So why not a dual blessing? I liked the contrasting colors of hair, the matching tones of the jackets, and the coppery body of the mannequin. Color is essential here.
20-MAR-2009
Contrasts, New York City, New York, 2009
Since there are probably more people on the streets of Manhattan than in any other US city, chances are that there are more cell phones in use as well. I found this odd couple making phone calls just outside Macy’s at Herald Square. The red-haired woman never moved her feet, just her lips. The man in black with the hat was pacing back and forth in front of her, and never stopped talking. The contrasts are abundant: man/woman, red/black, short/tall, sharp/soft, still/moving, left handed/right handed. Given the differences in costume, I would guess they probably also represent entirely different cultures. They each speak to a person they can’t see, and neither of them see each other, even though they are but a mere foot or two apart at the moment.
20-MAR-2009
Perfection, New York City, New York, 2009
Perfection takes many forms. In this case, the advertisement in the store window extols a bra called “The Perfect One” while a photographer just outside the window looks away to find what he hopes will be a perfect image. I can’t say if either the bra or the picture will be absolutely perfect, but as we know, both advertisers and photographers share a common trait: they deal in illusion.
20-MAR-2009
In command, New York City, New York, 2009
People reveal their personalities when talking on the phone. Even though we can’t hear what this man is saying, he seems to be saying it with a great deal of authority. He tucks his papers in close to his body, and holds the phone to his ear with an oversized hand. Assertiveness is common coin in New York City – he fits this place well. The original colors of the background wall and foreground plantings competed with the point I was trying to make, so I solved the problem by converting the image to black and white.
23-MAR-2009
Emotions, New York City, New York, 2009
New York sells advertising space on the exterior panels of its street telephone booths. I watched as a couple used such a phone booth in Chinatown – a man waited outside while a woman made the call. I filled half the frame with the ad, which featured the excited face of a child. In the other half of the frame, I placed the man, and waited for an emotional response that would play against that of the child. After a few moments, he clamped his hand to his head in seeming frustration, offering an incongruous counterpoint to the excitement of the child.
19-MAR-2009
Passionate farewell, New York City, New York, 2009
Public displays of affection are more commonly seen in big cities than in small ones. New York is no exception. Anonymity is a perk here. I found this couple locked in a passionate farewell under one of the ornate lampposts surrounding historic Bryant Park. I waited for a yellow taxi to fill my background and charge the image with vivid primary color and symbolize urban life. Since there are more yellow taxis on the streets of Manhattan than any other kind of vehicle, I only had the wait a fraction of a second. And the kiss took much longer than that.
19-MAR-2009
Demonstration, Times Square, New York City, New York, 2009
If you want to photograph a demonstration in New York, head to Times Square, the heart of the city’s entertainment district. We did. We heard the beating drums first. Then we saw the orange placards and people wearing white masks, representing, in this case, the global victims of war, occupation, and torture. I express the message here not only in the words on the sign, but also in the determinedly grim face of the protester, and in the softly focused victim’s mask that I cropped in half with the edge of my frame. I wanted that grim face to stand for all who feel wronged, and I wanted that anonymous half of a softly focused mask to represent all who suffer and die. Because that mask bleeds off the edge, I imply that there may be many more. And there are.
20-MAR-2009
Patience, Battery Park, New York City, New York, 2009
Crowds line up every day to board the boats that will carry them into New York harbor to visit the Statue of Liberty and the Immigration Museum at Ellis Island. On this day, it was bitterly cold, with freezing rain and snow flurries. These people have been patiently standing in line, waiting their turn to enter the security tents prior to boarding their boat. I see in their faces patience, endurance, and a touch of resignation. All of these attitudes are human values, and are mutually shared by the New Yorkers and visiting tourists who face such waits in lines all over the city. In the post 9/11 world, New York tenaciously protects its national treasures, and if its visitors must stand in line in the cold because of it, so be it.
20-MAR-2009
Manhattan, from Ellis Island, New York City, New York, 2009
I made this image through a window in the great hall that once held hundreds of European immigrants as they awaited entry into the United States. Manhattan is only a few miles across the harbor, but to many immigrants it must have seemed very far away. They had to wait in long lines to be questioned, examined, and cleared for entry, and some of them were turned away and sent back to where they came from. In this image, the Empire State Building, once the tallest building on earth, dominates the midtown skyline. By the time the Empire State Building was built in 1930, Ellis Island no longer processed immigrants. It was then used as a deportation center, closing in 1954. They were left to decay. The building on the left remains a ruin – only the main building has been restored to its original appearance, and reopened as an immigration museum in 1990.
20-MAR-2009
Echoes of the past, The Registry Room, Ellis Island, New York City, New York, 2009
Twelve million immigrants passed through this tiled hall between 1900 and 1924. Today it echoes to the footsteps of thousands of tourists. Many of them are the descendants of those immigrants. By abstracting the visiting tourists down to silhouettes and shadows, and converting the image to timeless black and white, I symbolize the American journeys that began in this room 85 to 100 years ago.
20-MAR-2009
Gramercy Park, New York City, New York, 2009
The New York Times called it “The Ultimate Neighborhood Park.” However it is always locked, off limits to everyone except neighborhood residents with keys. But through the magic of photography you can enjoy the view from the West end of the park. In the foreground is a monument to Samuel Ruggles, who purchased the land for the park back in 1831, when it was part of an uptown farm. Ruggles envisioned a community built around a central square owned by the neighbors, and that is what it remains today. I fill the image with the warmth of the late afternoon light, precious greenery, and a background of elegant apartment buildings.
20-MAR-2009
Consolidated Edison Tower, New York City, New York, 2009
Built in 1928, and designed by the same architect who created the famed Plaza Hotel, the Consolidated Edison Tower is the home of the city’s major electric and steam utility. Instead of photographing it in its entirety, I abstract the face of one its famous clocks by blocking 9 hours of it with an adjoining red brick apartment building. The late afternoon light warms the gray stone and intensifies the warmth of the red brick. The vertical flow of windows on the brick building complement the horizontal windows of the Tower. The key to this image, however, is the huge stone urn topped with a flame. There are four such urns on the Tower, and their flames symbolize the origins of the company itself. Consolidated Edison, New York’s electric company, was originally known as Consolidated Gas.
21-MAR-2009
Signage, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
The Bowery, formerly New York’s skid row, is being gradually gentrified. A sign for the times fills the side of an entire tenement building, which sports a façade painted in complementary colors. The result: an incongruous blending of 21st century advertising with 19th century architecture.
21-MAR-2009
Graffiti, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
The fire escape and windows of this tenement building become almost invisible in this image – the vivid colors and bold designs of the graffiti energize the structure as it expresses the culture of the neighborhood and creates a layer of folk art upon the architecture of another era. By underexposing the image, I deepen the colors and make the building recede even further into the background.
21-MAR-2009
Dream House, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
The Germania Bank Building was built in 1898, when the Bowery was middle class and German. To the casual passer-by, it appears to be abandoned. However photographer Jay Maisel purchased the entire building 42 years ago for $102,000 – and has lived in what New York Magazine calls “A 72-Room Bohemian Dream House” ever since. Six stories and 35,000 square feet of living space hosts Maisel, his wife, daughter, studio, and galleries. And there’s even a working elevator, the original 1898 copper cage. In 2005, Maisel’s home achieved New York City Landmark Status. The Bowery is being gentrified and the city wants the exterior to be graffiti free, but the building remains a mecca for street artists. Maisel has given up scrubbing his walls. While preserving part of New York’s 19th century history, he provides contemporary folk artists a canvas for expression. For this image of Maisel’s home, I use a wideangle lens to embrace as much graffiti as I can, and layer it with a lonely bicycle.
21-MAR-2009
Obama Rising, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
This is the most fascinating image I was able to make during seven days of shooting in New York City. Walking through the Bowery with fellow pbase photographers Tim May and Judy Tillinger, I came upon this spontaneous, layered, and ultimately accidental work of art on the wall of a building at the corner of The Bowery and Houston Street. It all begins at the top, with the remains of a Barack Obama campaign poster by street artist Shepard Fairey. Another street artist later “enhanced” it with vivid red, brown, and green coloration. Such modification is only fair, after all, because Fairey himself had based his poster on AP photographer Mannie Garcia’s shot of Obama at a press conference. Time, chance, and the weather then complete the picture before us. Additional posters and ads were later pasted over the enhanced Obama poster – the intersection of The Bowery and Houston Street is one of the busiest on the Lower East Side, and that wall is a prime spot for advertisements. On the day I appeared with my camera, those posters and ads were in shreds. Yet the top of Obama’s heroic visage can still be seen, rising above a world of chaos. A bit of bold graffiti comes into play as well – a steel plaque commemorating artist Keith Haring’s famous Bowery Mural a few yards to the west, has been obliterated by an indecipherable scrawl. And even that seems quite fitting. When Obama thanked Fairey for contributing the poster to his campaign, he told him “your images have had a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign.” Fairey responded by noting “…and that thing about stop signs? He’s kind of endorsing graffiti, isn’t he?” My own image finds shadows that add dimension, sculpting the torn posters and ads into abstract art. I add still another layer of expression, and in the process, I close the circle with photography. What began with Mannie Garcia’s image of Obama has ultimately become my own photograph of Obama Rising, with Shepard Fairey, the sun, wind, rain, and various unknown graffiti artists acting as my transformational agents.
21-MAR-2009
Young chef, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
Objects in windows can make fascinating photographs. Such is the case with this figure of a child dressed as a chef, which calls attention to the goods displayed in a restaurant supply shop on The Bowery. Coloration is the key to expression – the blue eyes are haunting. They seek us out and won’t let go.
21-MAR-2009
Mannequin, The Bowery, New York City, New York, 2009
A cartoonish mannequin representing a waiter stands with towel at the ready at the entrance to one of a number of restaurant supply shops on the Bowery. I found its presence incongruous, and photographed it from the side so that I could lead into it with a row of kitchen sinks, and back it up with a colorful umbrella that nearly repeats the color of the towel. I try to make the situation as life-like as possible – at first glance, one might even see the mannequin as real. New York can be a city of illusion, and this image shows us why.
21-MAR-2009
Clothing store, SoHo, New York City, New York, 2009
The slanting shadows that slice across this shop window are symbolically at odds with the name “Free People.” The three models depicted in the window display seem constrained rather than free. And that is why I made this image – things are often not what we would want them to be. The largest figure in the scene, the woman at right, seems to be symbolically blinded and made mute by the large black shadow running horizontally across the image. What is intended here as marketing icons of style and pleasure can, at a certain time of day, also become inadvertent symbols of pain and pressure. Such is the case here.
23-MAR-2009
The Cloud Club, Chrysler Building, New York City, New York, 2009
The Chrysler Building, once was the world’s tallest, is distinguished by its Art Deco crown. Yet what lies inside of that crown? From 1930 to 1979, three of its seven floors held the Cloud Club, which included a futuristic main dining room with polished granite columns and etched glass sconces, a cloud mural on its high curving ceiling, and a mural of Manhattan. Walter Chrysler himself – the man who commissioned the building -- had his own private dining room in the Cloud Club, featuring an etched glass frieze of automobile workers. And there was also a private dining room for the building’s Texaco executives, dominated by a giant mural of a refinery, and equipped with what was said to be the “grandest men’s room in all of New York.” After World War II, both the Cloud Club and the Chrysler Building fell on hard times, and the last blow came when Texaco moved its executives to Westchester County. The club closed for good in 1979. I wanted to pay my own respects to the memory of the legendary Cloud Club, but could not find any fluffy clouds to gather round the Art Deco crown. So I did the next best thing – I photographed the distinctive Art Deco crown with a long telephoto lens through a rising cloud of steam coming out of a pipe on Lexington Avenue.
21-MAR-2009
Prometheus, Rockefeller Center, New York City, New York, 2009
After the Statue of Liberty, Paul Manship’s gilded eight-ton 1934 sculpture of Prometheus is probably the most famous statue in New York City. Prometheus is said to have stolen fire from the god Zeus and given it to mankind. The model for Prometheus was a man named Leonardo Nole, a postal worker from New Rochelle, New York. He was a fitness buff, and had a taut fit body that Manship saw as perfect representation of a Greek god. His modeling fee (during the Great Depression) was $1 an hour. Nole died in 1998 at the age of 95. The statue itself was originally called Leaping Louie by New Yorkers, no doubt because the stock market had crashed, it was located at the base of a tall building, and it appeared to be frozen in mid-plummet. It originally anchored a shopping plaza, but it failed, and was replaced with a skating rink. Thousands of tourists photograph this statue every day, and hundreds skate below its feet, but few realize what it represents, and mentions of Paul Manship, Leonardo Nole, and Leaping Louie would draw a blank stare. I photographed the 75-year- old Prometheus by abstracting it down to the head and arm and a row of eleven jets of water. I did not include its torch because the hair itself seems to be a mass of fire. I underexposed the image to saturate the gilded surface of the sculpture and make it appear to be reaching towards us out of the past.
21-MAR-2009
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, New York, 2009
When St. Patrick’s opened in 1879, it was the tallest building in midtown New York. Today, it is dwarfed by Rockefeller Center just across Fifth Avenue, and by the glass walls of the office towers adjacent to it. This image tells such a story, and does it through abstraction. I reveal only a small portion of James Renwick’s intricate Gothic Revival façade, yet at the same time imply the height of its towers by reflecting one of them in the background building.
23-MAR-2009
Riverside Church, New York City, New York, 200
Riverside Church, built in 1930 with the support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in Morningside Heights, near the banks of the Hudson River, is the tallest church in the United States. Instead of describing its height by photographing its exterior, I chose to shoot its soaring stained glass windows from the inside, and compare them in scale to the tiny figure of a caretaker walking below them. The church has long been a center of lively political discussion. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro have all addressed its congregation.
21-MAR-2009
Illusions, New York City, New York, 2009
A huge upscale sportswear store on Fifth Avenue provides an appropriate symbolic backdrop for the silver stretch limousine that stands at rest beside it, most of it hidden in deep shadow. Everything in this image symbolizes affluence, yet no actual people are visible except for sanitized versions of humanity: the mannequins and fashion models displayed in the store windows. The ominous tone of this image suggests that wealth and power is both temporary and illusory, and their trappings may have lost their edge in these troubled times.
21-MAR-2009
News, New York City, New York, 2009
“News,” Isamu Noguchi’s first major architectural commission (1938-1940), was a stainless steel bas-relief mounted over the entrance to the Associated Press Building in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Its power rests in its huge scale. To make that scale speak, I waited for a person to leave the building and I photographed him just as he turned to his right. His directional flow is exactly the opposite of the flow of Noguchi’s dynamic diagonal that ties his massive sculpture together. The heroic figures on the wall are four times the size of the man in this picture. They represent real people engaged in the process of recording and transmitting news, yet Noguchi gives that task greater importance by rendering them in monumental scale. I make Noguchi’s art express that point to an even greater degree in this photograph by comparing his huge figures to the mere mortal who is leaving the building.
22-MAR-2009
Flatiron Building, New York City, New York, 2009
The Flatiron Building takes its name from the shape forced on it by the triangular plot it stands on. Designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, it was among the first skyscrapers in the world when it was built in 1902. Locals feared that a strong wind might blow it down, which caused many to call the building “Burnham’s Folly.” Today, its offices are highly coveted – particularly those at the point of the triangle which feature amazing northern views of the another famous New York landmark, the Empire State Building. The current tenants are a group of publishers. In early 2009, an Italian real estate company purchased a majority stake in the structure, and plans to turn it into a luxury hotel when the leases of the current tenants expire in 2019. The building has a special meaning for photographers as well – it is the subject of famous images taken by Edward Steichen in 1904 and Alfred Stieglitz in 1903. In my own image of the Flatiron Building, I’ve tried to equate it to a ship, steering a course on a dangerous sea. To do this, I’ve included only the triangular upper corner of the building, framing it in the midst of an array of bare branches. The color is rich and warm and full of energy, while the detail eloquently defines Burnham’s Beau Arts style.
22-MAR-2009
Tomb of General Worth, New York City, New York, 2009
A general is buried under a traffic island in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in New York City. His name was William Jenkins Worth. He was wounded in battle in the War of 1812, but went on to play a heroic role in the Mexican-American War in 1847. He died of cholera in Texas in 1849 and his remains are interred below an obelisk standing on an island of land where Fifth Avenue meets Broadway at 25th Street. Fort Worth, Texas, was named after him. I photographed the small bronze statue of General Worth that is set into the face of his tomb. The sun casts a large shadow, which adds a heroic dimension to the figure. I converted it to black and white to strengthen the character of both man and horse.
22-MAR-2009
Ensnared, New York City, New York, 2009
This reclining classical figure, which sits on top of a pediment over one of the doorways of the New York Appellate Court Building opposite Madison Square Park, is called “Evening.” I under expose my image to give it an environmental context worthy of its name. One third of the building’s construction budget in 1900 was devoted to art – a national competition was held to determine the list of sculptors who would work on the project. A mesh net surrounds the figure, in case any of the 109-year-old sculpture should break loose of its moorings. It ensnares “Evening,” and makes it linger.
23-MAR-2009
Grant’s Tomb, New York City, New York, 2009
General Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Armies to victory in the Civil War, and later became the 18th President of the United States, is entombed in the largest mausoleum in North America. Built in Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson River, the tomb was completed in 1897. Over a million people had attended Grant’s funeral two years earlier. Over the years, as interest in the Civil War declined, Grant was virtually forgotten, and the tomb was allowed to decay. One hundred years after its completion, the national park service spent almost two millions dollars to restore the tomb, and today it is in pristine condition. I photographed the two sculptures placed over the entrance, screened by the barren trees. They flank a tablet bearing four carved words from Grant’s letter accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1868: “Let us have peace.”
23-MAR-2009
Sarcophagus, Grant’s Tomb, New York City, New York, 2009
Ulysses S. Grant is entombed within an 8 ½-ton red granite sarcophagus in the center of the mausoleum. Julia Grant was interred within an identical sarcophagus at her husband’s side after her death in 1902. I photograph the Grant sarcophagus as a reflective abstraction of a geometric slab seemingly floating within the curving marble of the tomb’s sanctuary. By converting the image to black and white, I suggest a funerary tone and remove the warm color of morning light that fills the sanctuary.
23-MAR-2009
Alma Mater, Columbia University, New York City, New York, 2009
Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the statue of Lincoln in Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, also created the statue of the goddess Minerva that stands before Columbia’s Low Memorial Library. Known as Alma Mater, the statue has become the symbol of the University, one of the oldest in the United States. I remove the statue’s color, helping it blend into the shadows that form between the pillars of the library. Holding a staff with one hand, and extending the other hand upwards, the statue seems to energize those columns and makes the image whole.
22-MAR-2009
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, New York City, New York, 2009
The Bethesda Fountain is the central feature of Central Park’s mall. Sculpted by Emma Stebbins, it was dedicated in 1873 and became known as The Angel of the Waters. While I was there, some children began to blow bubbles into the air, and as they drifted below the fountain’s basin, I made this photograph. Both angels and bubbles are the stuff of fantasy, and they seem to complement each other well.
22-MAR-2009
Skaters, Central Park, New York City, New York, 2009
There has always been skating in Central Park, and the tradition continues into the 21st century. The Wollman Rink was donated to Central Park 50 years ago, and it is currently operated by Donald Trump’s organization. I emphasize the rink in this wideangle, late afternoon view by exposing for the white ice and the shooting into the sun. This allows the image to darken, and only suggest the presence of the buildings that line the park, as well as abstracting the foliage of the park itself. The sun’s glare explodes into shafts of light that magically point to the ice skaters below.
22-MAR-2009
General Sherman, Central Park, New York City, New York
The gilded equestrian statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the most popular in the city. It stands in Grand Army Plaza on the southeast corner of the park, opposite the Plaza Hotel – a mecca for street performances. It is the work of sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens, who worked on this statue from 1892 to 1903. The statue of Sherman is considered to be one of the world’s finest equestrian monuments. Accompanied by Nike, the Goddess of Victory, Sherman is symbolically being led into the battles of 1864 that split the Confederacy in two, effectively ending the Civil War. I build the image around the soft golden coloration of the figures. The clouds parted just enough to produce reflective light that subtly illuminates both Nike and Sherman, while keeping the base, horse, and surrounding buildings in deep shadow. The play of reflective light energizes the figures, and brings the image to life.
23-MAR-2009
Civic booster, Chinatown, New York City, New York, 2009
New York’s Chinatown is the second largest Chinese enclave in the Western Hemisphere, trailing only San Francisco’s. I found this resident enjoying the sun on a cold March day in Columbus Park. The slogan on his hat tells us how he feels about his city.
23-MAR-2009
Street scene, Chinatown, New York City, New York, 2009
Chinatown is set within one of the oldest neighborhoods of Manhattan, once known as the infamous Five Points District, the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New York. In the 1960s, the population of Chinatown exploded, expanding into what once was known as Little Italy and the Lower East side, but gentrification is raising rents, and many Chinese are now moving to Queens and Brooklyn. The narrow side streets of the original Chinatown are lined with 19th century tenements and shops, such as the one in this photograph. I built this image around the dilapidated wooden molding that frames a set of windows holding a poster displaying a large close-up photo of a newborn infant. I can’t read Chinese, so I don’t know what cause or service the poster relates to, but its mysterious power is invisible to the woman who passes into my frame. She seems oblivious to everything but the music that fills the buds of her iPod. The image, which became even more mysterious after I abstract it by converting it to black and white, offers more questions than answers. What does the baby represent? Does the woman, who is not Chinese, live here, or is she a visitor, as I was? And what stories could this frayed and worn building tell us if it could speak?
23-MAR-2009
Street market, Chinatown, New York City, New York, 2009
Color is critical here – it is very lifeblood of the image. The reds, yellows, and purples draw the eye to the fruits and vegetables that fill the frame. The market itself is fully mobile – everything here came out of the graffiti covered truck that is parked in the background.
23-MAR-2009
Card game, Columbus Park, Chinatown, New York City, New York, 2009
Bundled against the chill, a card player ponders his next move. We know what his opponent has in his hand, the man in the red hat must guess before he commits. This image is about the moment of decision in a card game that is just one of the many that were going on in this park. Columbus Park is the only park in Chinatown -- the community’s outdoor rec room. It was built in the 1890s, replacing the notorious Mulberry Bend slum photographed by reformer Jacob Riis.
23-MAR-2009
Tourist traffic, Chinatown, New York City, New York, 2009
The streets of Chinatown are lined with vendors selling imitation perfumes, watches, handbooks, and souvenirs, which are largely purchased by tourists. Over 200 Chinese restaurants vie for their attention as well. This vendor specializes in selling New York City souvenir tote bags. All of them are probably made in China.
18-MAR-2009
Pearl Street, New York City, New York, 2009
I made this image from the ramp leading to the Brooklyn Bridge. It soars over Pearl Street, one of the busiest avenues on the Lower East Side. The late afternoon light abstracts the scene, silhouetting the figures crossing the street and turning the pavement into a river of brownish gold.
18-MAR-2009
Under the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, New York, 2009
One of the first suspension bridges in the US, the Brooklyn Bridge was also the longest when it was opened with great fanfare in 1883. It took thirteen years to build, and for several years, its famed neo-Gothic towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Its designer, John Roebling, made it six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. As a result, the Brooklyn Bridge is still working 125 years later. I went down under the bridge on its Manhattan side and photographed a figure walking through one of the tunnels that supports the massive overhead ramp. The afternoon light is golden; its angle full of abstracting power, and the diagonal thrust of the figure’s arm echoes the line of the overhead shadow.
18-MAR-2009
The East River, from the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, New York, 2009
My long telephoto lens draws the nearby ferryboats, the Statue of Liberty, the cranes of the Bayonne Military Ocean Terminal, and the distant Bayonne Bridge together within a single shot. Using spot metering, I expose on the sun's glittering reflection on the East River, turning the sky dark and making silhouettes out of everything else.
20-MAR-2009
The Statue of Liberty, New York City, New York, 2009
The Statue of Liberty is one of the most familiar icons of the United States. Dedicated in 1886, it has welcomed immigrants and visitors to America for more than 120 years. Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi drew on the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for inspiration. A gift from France to the United States, the statue also was nurtured on the legend of Libertas, ancient Rome’s goddess of freedom. It does not stand still – it seems to step forward, her left foot crushing broken shackles. Her crown symbolizes all seven continents, and her torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand represents knowledge, and shows the date of the US Declaration of Independence. I made this photograph from the upper deck of a boat in motion. The sky was overcast, yet full of broken storm clouds. I position the statue over one of the brightest spots in the sky, a hazy sun which appears to breaking through at upper right. Exposing for the sun, I abstract the scene, yet I keep the color in the statue– the traces of green copper that give it so much of its identity. It is possible to draw many meanings from this image, but to me it represents the present state of the world, and my own country. Turbulent economies and terrible wars always cause suffering and can take a toll on human liberty – these are difficult times, yet this enduring symbol of freedom appears ready and willing to take them on.