New York/Soho Photo

Soho Photo gallery, Tribeca

Last night I participated in an architectural photography panel discussion sponsored by the ASMP at Soho Photo on White Street, which is actually in Tribeca. There were four panelists: Paul Warchol, Albert Vecerka, Adrian Wilson, and myself. Paul is one of the most noted and successful architectural photographers in the field, and Albert is a younger, prodigiously talented ESTO photographer who assisted for me a number of times years ago.

Adrian Wilson, I wasn't familiar with, but he seems to have arrived in New York from England a few years back, and has ended up working for all kinds of big clients, and claims to shoot interiors with one lens and no lights. His work has its punchy qualities, but I much prefer Paul and Albert's photographs, which both exhibit great visual intelligence and sensitivity, even in the service of client assignments.

We each presented our work before a crowd of about 40 people, mostly photographers. I showed a quick overview of my architectural photo career as well as a few images from my art/documentary projects. Albert walked us through the process of several photo shoots including a series of photographs of the historic motel site and adjoining museum where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

The event was organized by Nicolai Froelich, who has assisted me on various photo shoots, and I think the whole thing came off rather well.


Behind my office on Stanton Street (a few days ago)

New York/42nd Street and 5th Avenue

42nd Street and Fifth Avenue (4x5 film)

My life is a constant yo-yoing between mundane assignments and obligations, and extraordinary moments and opportunities. One is tempted, at times, to complain about the drudgery of less interesting work, but as I've found over the years, the extraordinary moments often spring without warning from those flat interludes.

Consider the picture above, which I think is a fine representation of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue at very heart of Midtown. Behind me is the Public Library and in the right is Chrysler Building towering over Grand Central Terminal. My assignment was to shoot the H&M store kitty corner across the intersection attempting to locate it at this famous spot. Earlier I had done a number of closer pictures that described the storefront well, but didn't say much about the location.

While making one of the closer views, an elevation of the store windows while several window dressers adjusted the manniquins (a nice bit of unplanned activity), a man stopped and we chatted briefly. He had an interest in large format photography and was glad to see that I was still using a view camera. He did pictures himself, usually of architecture in Turkey and eastern Europe, and, in fact, was headed to Bulgaria the next day. I just barely caught his name as he dashed off down 42nd Street.

I then crossed Fifth Avenue, and as the light began to fall, I discovered the view above from the elevated terrace in front of the Public Library. This was where I should have been looking from the beginning.

Later, when I got home, I Googled the name of the person I had spoken to on the street--Steve Lewis--and discovered that he was an architectural historian, urban planner, writer, translator, Fulbright scholar, and on and on. He had lived in the Netherlands for years, as I had, and grew up on the Lower East Side, the neighborhood that has been at the center of my life in New York. I e-mailed him, and because his trip to Bulgaria was postponed, we met in a café the next day and had a most enjoyable conversation about photography, architecture, and life in the Netherlands.

It's a cliché to say that photography is about serendipity. Usually, it refers to catching something in the split second of an exposure. But for me, it's about chance events much more broadly defined: like the opening of the Berlin Wall in the midst of my project photographing the Iron Curtain, or much more prosaically, an encounter in the flow of people and cars on a familiar corner while shooting an H&M clothing store.

Virginia Beach/Williamsburg, Virginia

Regent University/Christian Broadcasting Network

Continuing to photograph megachurches and other contemporary religious structures. One of the most influential such institutions is Pat Robertson's 700 Club (Christian Broadcasting Network) and Regent Unversity located in Virginia Beach. Both the broadcasting operation and school are located on a campus just off of Interstate 64. The campus is comprised of a collection of large colonial style buildings set in a well-tended, often beautiful, landscape. The buildings evoke Virginia heritage, but are grossly out of scale--classicism on steroids. I did several pictures of the communications building with a bevy of CBN satellite dishes off to one side.


Rock Church

Although the majority of megachurches are located in the new suburbs, or exurban areas of American cities, a significant number are found in older suburbs or near downtown. Rock Church is in a somewhat more mature suburban area of Virginia Beach. It's hard to talk about Virginia Beach as a conventional city. It was originally a beach front town to the east of Norfolk, but eventually white flight and others forces of suburbanization turned it into the state's largest city. It lacks a center, and although there are beautiful neighborhoods, much of the city can be described as sprawl.

Rock Church is a large structure, and apparently replaces an earlier domed hall a block away. It stands directly opposite a public school and their parking lots, more or less, run together. A waterfall gushes into a small pond out front. The stars and stripes flew at half mast when I was there, I think in memory of their pastor who had recently died.


Atlantic Shores Baptist Church

Not far from Regent University I photographed around Atlantic Shores Baptist Church, which stands across from a shopping center and a new apartment complex. Unlike the other places I've visited Atlantic Shores actually displays a cross on a central tower, which makes it more immediately recognizable as a religious complex. It's a somewhat scruffy property with temporary buildings and a broad grassy field that appears to be used for parking when needed. I did one picture looking across the field, and a couple of views from the apartment complex with the cross rising up in the distance.

Driving around Virginia Beach I came across London Bridge Bridge Baptist Church, which features a huge conventional church front with box-like sanctuary tucked behind. I don't have a digital photo to show, but I took several pictures with the view camera, one from the neighborhood across the street. I ended the day at Wave Church, which is in the process of constructing a decidedly unchurch like extension. This glass curtain walled building called the Wave Convention Center could easily fit into a corporate office park.


Wave Church with Wave Convention Center under construction

Here's what it says on their website:

WAVE CONVENTION CENTER

Once completed, WCC will be a 90,000 square foot 2,500 seat auditorium, with every seat having a great view of the stage. It will feature a built-in baptismal pool, beautiful new screens for media and a stage for Worship & Creative Arts. There will be plenty of room for conferences, productions, Christmas and Easter services, Hillsong nights, etc. WCC will aslo provide plenty of alter space for people to respond to the call of the Kingdom, as people stream to Christ.

The foyer will serve many purposes. The 1st floor will offer an express-line bookshop, coffee shop and information area. The 2nd floor will provide a destination bookshop and a coffee shop where people can stop to read, buy a coffee or snack and connect to the internet via WI-FI. The 3rd floor will provide much needed office space for our pastors and staff. As we continue to grow, we want the quality of our Pastoral Care to grow as well. The building itself will also provide 10 restrooms, including 26 men's and 38 women's stalls. This is a significant increase.

But of course, it's not about the bricks and mortar...


Williamsburg Community Chapel

Back in Williamsburg where I was visiting my father, I photographed the Williamsburg Community Chapel, which has just about completed a major new extension. This church sits in the woods off of route 5, a beautiful highway between Williamsburg and Richmond. The area around the church is rapidly growing, and the woods are fast disappearing. Like so many of these large churches, the parking lot is the primary feature of the landscape; empty much of the time.

I photographed the new side of the church with entrance portico and parking lot in the foreground. Many of the houses in the neighborhood nearby were empty, but I don't know if that's the result of the current housing slowdown seen across the country, or just the normal turnaround time for new houses.

Williamsburg/Hampton, Virginia

Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que, Williamsburg, Virginia

I began my short stay in Williamsburg with a meal at Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que. Pierce's has been around forever, and specializes in melt-in-the-mouth pork sandwiches. I had this:

JC'S SPECIAL $7.25
This Popular "Jumbo" sandwich - 5 oz. of our famous pulled pork bar-b-que in "Doc" Pierce's Original Bar-B-Que Sauce, layered with our homemade slaw. Comes with regular drink, french fries, and homebaked cookie.

Pierce's is a roadside shack, but an upgraded shack. Kind of bright with lots of orange accent color, it's not really an atmosphere for lingering. Truck drivers mingle with the local folks. There are nice pictures on the walls of earlier, even more modest, versions of the restaurant. Williamsburg has always been a schizophrenic place. You've got the college crowd, Colonial Williamsburg, and now, wealthy retirees. But there's always been a rural element, both white and black, vestiges of the old south. There are people who'd never go to the colonial restoration, but go wild over the Pottery Factory, a vast emporium of cheap crockery and goo gaws for the home. Pierce's Pitt Bar-b-que caters to both sides of town.

Check out their website and don't miss the scrapbook. See the famous--and infamous--politicians seeking authenticity by visiting Pierce's.


Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que

I had already mapped a number of megachurches (my new photo project) in the Hampton Roads area, and two were close to each other just off Mercury Boulevard. When I was a teenager Mercury Boulevard was the place to go for a movie, shopping at the mall, and concerts at the Coliseum. I even bought my first guitar on Mercury Boulevard in a shop housed in a small bungalow along the service road, obviously built long before the present ten lanes of blacktop.

Today the street is--let's not mince words here--a horror. It exhibits everything that is wrong in America's obsessive car culture, but more than that, it doesn't even function well in that context. I remember when they built Coliseum Mall with a one lane flyover funneling traffic to the parking lot. The flyover flies no more, and the mall has been demolished. It is being replaced by a new-fangled ye olde mall, just as big with the same endless parking lots, but with touches of faux main street frillery.


Bethel Temple, Hampton, Virginia

Bethel Temple is a domed flying saucer shaped object across from its own parking lot and a BP gas station. An empty field with a grouping of trees that once must have surrounded a house lies diagonally across. I parked in the lot of a nearby shopping center and took several shots from directly across the street and from some distance away. Like a lot of these churches it's an assemblage of buildings revealing the growth of the church from, usually, humble beginnings.


R.O.C.K. Ministries and Bethel Temple in rear

In sight, just up the street near Mercury Boulevard a tiny church called the R.O.C.K. (Restoration of Christ's Kingdom) Ministries occupies a small building along with its affiliated businesses: Dora's Drycleaning, Performance Haircutting (waxing by Jeannie), and Studio 5 (photography).


Liberty Baptist Church

A couple of miles away is Liberty Baptist Church, a sprawling campus with very new looking buildings. I stayed off the grounds--maybe later when I get more confident about what I'm doing I'll walk in and and ask to take photographs. I did several photographs from the street with lots of grass in the foreground. The buildings are low slung making it hard to get a sense of the form of the structures. There's a large port-cochere in front, which is, from what I've seen, common with megachurches. Basically, the place looks like a community college or hospital.


Houses near Liberty Baptist Church

A small neighborhood of new houses stands adjacent, directly across from the front door. I made one photograph with the houses in the foreground and the church just visible beyond the fence at rear. If you lived here, even though the church is right behind your house, you'd probably drive. It's a long way around, and just not a walking environment.

New York/Taxi

From the taxi window on he way to Penn Station

Headed to Virginia for several days--began what I hope will be a new project, photographing megachurches and the landscapes around them. I decided to begin in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia because it is the home of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (700 Club) and Regent College. While not a megachurch, the campus is a major center of power in the evangelical movement.

Pictures coming up.

It was also an opportunity to look in on my father who is in an assisted living facility in Williamsburg, Virginia.

New York/Coney Island

Wonder Wheel, Coney Island (4x5 film)

The sublimely tawdry Astroland and Deno's Wonder Wheel will, apparently, live for one more season. What happens next is uncertain. One thing for sure, three landmarked structures will remain--the Parachute Jump, the Cyclone roller coaster, and the Wonder Wheel.

Rummaging through my archive I found the picture above. Had to be early 1990s. I can't tell much from the clothing. I was shooting a few Brooklyn icons for a client. Somewhere in my boxes, I believe, there is a 20x24 print of this image.

New York/Amster Yard

Amster Yard/Instituto Cervantes (4x5 film)
East 49th Street between Second and Third Avenues

Been busy the last few days shooting for the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural institute, which occupies a group of small buildings that surround the Amster Yard. The Amster Yard is a rare thing in New York, a courtyard/garden tucked into the middle of a block, open to the public.

New York Times article about the restoration of the space.

Apparently, the work entailed the complete rebuilding of several structures around the garden rather than actual restoration. In the Netherlands, where I livd part time for 15 years, I saw a completely different attitude about restoration of historic buildings than in New York. It was common for historic structures to be meticulously rebuilt from the ground up, sometimes at the cost of the patina of age. On the other hand, in New York, there is a tendency to sentimentalize the past--perhaps because it disappears so quickly--although there is now a willingness to accomodate the immediate juxtapostion of new and old.

In any case, the Amster Yard, along with the activities of the Instituto Cervantes, is a welcome oasis open to the public on East 49th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

New York/Around Town

Houston/Lafayette Street


Sheridan Square/Seventh Avenue

Looking up.

New York/New Museum

The New Museum

Without comment.

New York/The Bowery

The Bowery and Grand Street (4x5 film)

The Bowery, which is the western boundary of the Lower East Side, has gotten a lot of attention since the recent opening of the New Museum. It's the last frontier of lower Manhattan, already greatly transformed, though Chinatown continues to resist change.


The Bowery and East Fifth Street (4x5 film)


Houston and Bowery (4x5 film)

Going through my LES negatives I realized that I had enough images of the Bowery to make it a project within a project. So, I've done up some new web pages. No text or anything as this point. I'm not sure what I want to say. I haven't yet linked to my main site. Anyway, take a look.

http://www.brianrose.com/bowery/bowery.htm