BRIAN ROSE • PHOTOGRAPHY | Architectural
Photography • Fine
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![]() LAST STOP Kickstarter campaign coming soon! Years ago, while riding the subway with my 12-year-old son, rattling across the Williamsburg Bridge with the city spread out below us, he said to me that sometimes he felt like he was living at the center of the world. His words reminded me that when I was younger I often felt the same way. As a result, I began trying to see the city through his eyes – in the present – a newly dynamic metropolis, more diverse, less Manhattan-centric, with at least a million more people than in the '70s and '80s.
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Last year, I set out with my camera to discover this new city, a multi-centered urban fabric, stitched together by the vast web of the subway system. I decided to photograph the neighborhoods at the ends of all of the subway lines in the city. I traveled by foot and by train with one camera and one lens held at my side. The result is a portrait of the city emerging from the lull of the Covid pandemic, vibrant again, messy, a polyglot of languages and ethnicities, a city threatened by a president intent on killing the goose that laid the golden egg. However, one should not forget that New Yorkers pulled down the statue of King George III on Bowling Green in 1776. They will not suffer wannabe kings or fools this time either.
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TIME AND SPACE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE METAMORPHOSIS: MEATPACKING DISTRICT In 2010, I decided to self-publish Time and Space on the Lower East Side, a book that encapsulates 30 years of history and change in New York City. It was a big leap into the unknown, and an even bigger financial risk. The book sold out in about a year – more than 1,000 copies – all without professional PR or distribution. A few years later, I undertook another book project, Metamorphosis, about the Meatpacking District, then and now, 1985 and 2013. That book has also sold out. I would like to do second editions – with additional pictures – of both projects. We shall see... In the meantime, I am making both books available online. Click on the links at right. Information about both books can be found here. |
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![]() Four Seasons Total Landscaping |
FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING
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WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: IN TIME OF PLAGUE A comprhensive portrait of Williamsburg during the Covid-19 pandemic. From March 20th through April 20th I walked the empty streets to every corner of this sprawling neighborhood. Famous for its hipsters and gentrification, the reality is much more complex. It is a diverse place full of jarring juxtapositions in a disjunctive and often broken urban landscape. I have witnessed this city’s ups and down for almost five decades – the bankrupt 70s, AIDs in the 80s, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and the city’s recent economic ascendance. This spring, with the trees bursting into bloom, the city that never sleeps came to an almost unthinkable halt. These photographs document that moment when time seemed to freeze, when the crowds dispersed, when the stage was left vacant, and, for once, the show did not go on.
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PHOTOS
© BRIAN ROSE USED WITH PERMISSION ONLY |