New York/In Time of Plague - JOURNAL • BRIAN ROSE

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

I’ve now made nine walks through Williamsburg in the past couple of weeks – basically since the coronavirus crisis took hold. There are some photographs that include evidence of the epidemic, but most do not. Although I have made photographs on rainy days, the weather, in general, has been beautiful as early Spring in New York tends to be. The trees are blooming, daffodils are poking up everywhere, and it has become hard to decide what to wear – too cold for short sleeves, but too warm for a coat.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

I am reminded of what I said to another photographer many years ago. Someone who was having a hard time adjusting to the wave of color taking over the architectural photography field, and photography in general. He was troubled by the insipidness of color – he said that is was too cheerful, too glib.

He knew, of course, that I was an early adopter of color, someone who had made the break from black and white and never looked back. My response was that I did not uncritically assign meaning to color – that I believed these were cultural cliches to be resisted. A blue sky was a blue sky, not a signifier of something predetermined. I was aware, naturally, of the tendency for people to make these associations – I took that into account when making my pictures. But on principle, I let the facts speak for themselves, and people could make of it what they wanted.

And so here we are. The city in the grip of a plague. The streets largely empty, and the weather does not care. The sky relentlessly blue, or just blue because it is.