New York/Chelsea 1985 - JOURNAL • BRIAN ROSE

West 20th and 10th Avenue 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

When I made my photographs of the Meatpacking District in 1985, I also walked up into Chelsea. I didn’t include those pictures in Metamorphosis, Meatpacking District 1985 + 2013, because I wanted a tighter, more focused, book. I scanned everything, however, but am just getting around to color correcting and posting those images on Instagram and here on my blog.

West 21st. Street and 10th Avenue, 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

Like the Meatpacking District, the area had greatly declined from it heyday as New York’s docklands. Both passenger and freight shipping once lined the Hudson River along the westside of Manhattan. Trains serviced the warehouse buildings and markets — some freight cars coming by barge across the river — others on the High Line, the elevated rail viaduct that threads its way between and even through the buildings. Prior to that, tracks ran directly down 10th Avenue — the avenue of death it was called — because so many people were killed by the trains.

London Terrace, 10th Avenue and 23rd Street, 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

23rd and 11th Avenue, 1985 (4×5) — © Brian Rose

West 28th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

10th Avenue and West 23rd Street, 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

I made these photographs over several days in January and February 1985. It was time of transition for me, looking beyond Manhattan, which had been my photographic habitat for almost ten years. That summer I began photographing the Iron Curtain border — I went twice in 1985 — and that work became my primary focus for several years. After the wall came down, I have continued to follow developments in Berlin, returning every four or five years. So, 1985 was a busy year for me.