Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Dorothea Lange’s work, and that of other “concerned photographers,” to use Cornell Capa’s oft-repeated phrase. As a young photographer, I rejected the style of photo-journalism promoted by Life magazine, and what I saw as the glib humanism of the famous “Family of Man” exhibition curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art. To me, there was an insurmountable gap between the steely-eyed gaze of Walker Evans and the empathetic eye of Lange. Evans pursued some of the same subjects – sharecroppers in the south, for instance – but maintained a certain distance. He described what he saw in stoic terms rather than attempting to express emotional engagement. That makes his images all the more powerful, in my view.

Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

No, I haven’t changed my position. But this is a really beautifully conceived exhibition, curated by Sarah Meister, (@momameister) that makes a strong case for re-assessment. To an extent, Lange’s photography has been overshadowed by itself – by iconic images like “Migrant Mother” – one of the most famous pictures ever taken. This image and other touchstones of the genre obscure a more diverse approach in style and content than is generally known, and they tend to limit her multi-decade work to one time period.

Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

One of my favorite pictures shows a young girl on a porch with a scrim of vines in front of her. It’s from Lange’s FSA work, still her strongest. The vegetation acts as both a framing device and a visual barrier. The composition is rectilinear, almost a Mondrian-esque grid. The specific context or rationale for the image is mysterious, but as a viewer, it is not always what you know, but what you don’t know that matters most. The caption reads:  “Butter bean vines across the porch. Negro quarter in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Another image in the same grouping shows a somber-faced woman in a fancy automobile framed in an oval window. My first thought was of Rosa Coldfield, the embittered raconteur in Faulkner’s quintessential southern novel “Absalom Absalom.” According to a recent Times review of the show, John Szarkowski, the MoMA curator who first mounted an exhibit of Lange’s work in 1965, originally thought the image likely depicted a haughty, privileged woman looking out from her car. The title of the photograph, however, is “Funeral Cortege, End of an Era in a Small Valley Town, California.” The caption either expands or diminishes the meaning of the image, take your pick.

“Rose II” by Isa Genzken in the MoMA sculpture garden – © Brian Rose

“Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures” is a wide-ranging exhibition not done justice by my few comments. I’m happy to see it for a number of reasons beyond the fact that Lange’s work deserves reconsideration. I do not think that photography benefits from the new interdisciplinary format of the Modern, and an exhibit like this one, demonstrates why. Like many photographs, these are best seen in isolation, untethered by comparisons to painters who may have dealt superficially with similar subject matter. The history of photography is integral to the history of art in general, but it also runs on a parallel track with its own sequence of developments and its own internal logic. I greatly miss the photography department with its comprehensive presentation of the medium’s history.

The other reason this exhibition is so timely is because of its social and political content. We are living in a moment when the kind of engagement seen in Lange’s work is desperately needed.

Atlantic City in the MoMA store – © Brian Rose

I made a quick stop in the museum store on the way out and was not terribly surprised to find myself missing among the “Rs” in the photo book section. “Atlantic City,” my portrait of a city in the aftermath of Donald Trump, has not found its way into all book stores – and truth be told, I’m not exactly a famous photographer – though I am in the collection of this place. But then, there it was! In the wrong place on the shelf.

The Vessel, Hudson Yards, New York –  © Brian Rose

Yesterday, a young man, 19 years old, jumped to his death from The Vessel, the iconic sculptural centerpiece of Hudson Yards on the westside of Manhattan. As with any suicide, this is a tragedy for family and friends – even those who witnessed the fall – who are not likely to forget the moment.

But let me cut right to the chase. The Vessel should be torn down. Had this been a publicly vetted structure, something this visually aggressive and potentially dangerous would never have been approved. Hudson Yards – its buildings and open spaces – were privately developed, and there was insufficient community input in the building out of such a large swath of Manhattan. According to Curbed, “Hudson Yards is the largest private real estate development in the United States, spanning 28 acres and accommodating upward of 18 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space.”

I am not saying that this suicide is anyone’s direct fault – we can’t stop every individual under duress from harming themselves – but I am questioning whether due diligence was exercised in the planning and design of The Vessel. I am willing to concede that the intention of the developer and architect was to provide a public amenity at the same time acting as a magnet for shoppers and tourists. Let us hope, however, that it will not also become a magnet for jumpers.

This is not a trivial concern. There is ample research on the problem of suicide hotspots around the world. Famous structures like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower have been forced to erect barriers or nets to discourage jumpers. Will we now wait and see what happens at Hudson Yards? The Vessel’s railings are low and easily scaled, and the way in which the walkways funnel out as you go up the stairs provides an unhindered fall to the plaza below.

Audrey Wachs, the former associate editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, wrote in 2016: “As one climbs up Vessel, the railings stay just above waist height all the way up to the structure’s top, but when you build high, folks will jump.”

The Vessel serves no function. It is a blight on the cityscape of Manhattan. And, apparently, it may present a temptation to those who wish to end their lives in a very dramatic way. No one in New York wanted this thing. Tear it down.

East 5th Street 1980 — © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty

We here in New York are greatly concerned about gentrification and its effects and have been for as long as I have lived in the city — I arrived in 1977. I am not a native New Yorker. I moved to the Lower East Side as one of a cadre of artists and musicians that famously occupied lower Manhattan at a time when large segments of the city had emptied out. Fled. Abandoned ship. Left for the suburbs. Then the kids from the suburbs came back. They did great things, or they blew out their brains on drugs. I got involved with a politically engaged neighborhood group that fought against city policies that led to displacement. The city wanted to sell an empty building on Second Avenue for $1 to a developer. In those days there were few takers. We managed to save the building and turn it into permanent low-cost housing for homeless families.

Norfolk Street 1980 — © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty
Puerto Rican independence mural

I knew then, as I know now, that those who come to New York from elsewhere unintentionally contribute to this seemingly permanent dynamic called gentrification — whether we had money or not we brought wealth — a wealth of energy, ideas, and dreams. Some came for fame, some for money, some for sexual freedom, some simply to find themselves in a place that welcomed everyone from everywhere. Some were idealistic, some were opportunistic. And as always, there were the true immigrants from other countries, or from Puerto Rico, people who fled poverty, intolerance, and violence.

So when I hear the borough president of Brooklyn complain about those who come to New York from other places, who somehow don’t fit in, I get a little upset. Eric Adams, a mayoral hopeful said:  “Go back to Iowa! You go back to Ohio! New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is.” This is a person who does not seem to understand New York, despite (or because of) the fact that he was born and raised here. I know, of course, that he is concerned about gentrification and its effect on predominately black neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It’s a real issue. The demographic shifts that have occurred in New York since I’ve been here are profound, but they involve a complex array of factors that go far beyond our borders. Such factors even include the dissolution of the Soviet/American world order and the concomitant (and often corrupt) redistribution of capital.

Union Square Park 2001 — © Brian Rose

But the problems New York faces are not mitigated by devolving into tribal politics. That is Trumpism. Even in this most liberal and diverse of all American cities, the plague of Trump has crept into our political discourse. It’s not us against them. It’s not about who has a claim to true citizenship of a city that has prided itself on being the most cosmopolitan of places. It’s not the young people from Ohio or Iowa who are the problem. It’s not the Chinese fleeing oppression or the Central Americans fleeing violence. It’s not the computer programmers and software developers who come for the jobs available in the city. It’s not even Wall Street that is the prime enemy — the financial marketplace has been integral to the city since the founding of the stock exchange in 1817.

Hudson River Park 2014 — © Brian Rose

Gentrification is a symptom of serious issues that need to be addressed, like a shortage of affordable housing — not an excuse for pointing the finger at our neighbors and demonizing those who come to New York to realize their aspirations. Fix what is broken, don’t break what is our greatest strength — our diversity, our embrace of different races, religions, and sexual orientations — our dreams,  even our most audacious ambitions to greatness. That’s the New York I came for, and the one I still believe in.

In doing my Atlantic City project, I did a lot of combing the internet to find the quotes that are placed adjacent to the images in the book. I read several historical books about the city, watched videos and films, and looked for photographers who had covered the subject. I came across several but missed the work of Arthur Nager who photographed Atlantic City in 1972 when the city was at its lowest point. He reached out to me recently, and I want to call attention to his stunning images of Atlantic City.

© Arthur Nager

In 1972 Atlantic City was a desolate urban landscape. White middle-class residents had fled, and tourists had lots of other options on the Jersey Shore. The state of New Jersey voted to legalize gambling in Atlantic City 1976, and the first casino, Resorts Casino Hotel, opened in 1978. The Louis Malle film, Atlantic City, vividly inhabits that period of time, the twilight between the old Atlantic City of crumbling hotels, boarding houses and small-time gangsters, and the new glitzy Atlantic City of mega-casinos and a different scale of crime brought by predators like Donald Trump.

© Arthur Nager

© Arthur Nager

Go to Arthur Nager’s website and see the whole series. And while you’re there look at his other work — a whole career of urban landscape projects.

Although it has been 38 years since Nager photographed Atlantic City, and the skyline of the city has been transformed, there are a number of prominent buildings still standing like Boardwalk Hall seen above, or The Claridge Hotel, its cupola seen in the distance.

And we even managed to photograph the same modest hotel from nearly the same viewpoint.

© Arthur Nager

© Brian Rose

Former Mars Bar at East 1st Street and Second Avenue in 2006

Mars Bar was the quintessential dive bar, its passing mourned by many, including many who never stepped foot in the place. I went in once, and while I admired the exuberant state of decrepitude, glancing at the handful of desultory patrons, I knew that was not going to be my hangout. The bar itself hung on longer than one would have expected as the neighborhood around it gentrified. It was a city-owned urban renewal building, which, after decades of activist vs. city battles,  eventually was urban renewed out of existence.

Mars Bar drawing by Tim Raymond, 2007

It should be noted that 25% of the new housing built there was subsidized, and the trade-off with the community resulted in the renovation of over 500 units of permanent low-income housing, mostly on nearby 3rd and 4th Streets. Other amenities included the protection of the Liz Christie Garden along Houston Street, the first community garden in the city.

But Mars Bar is long gone, a small symbolic piece of the once gloriously shambolic streetscape of the Lower East Side.

East 1st Street between Second Avenue and The Bowery, 2005

The Bowery and East 1st Street, 2005

295 Bowery, the site of the infamous McGurk’s Suicide Hall.

From The Bowery Boys website:

But the dance hall at 295 Bowery, the loathsome establishment owned by John McGurk, was not a place to admire. It was the worst of the worst, a dive where criminal activity thrived alongside bawdy can-can dancers and endless pours of putrid booze.

In early March of 1899, a woman named Bess Levery climbed to one of the top floors of McGurk’s — floors given over to illegal behavior — and killed herself by drinking carbolic acid. Within a week, two more women had ventured to McGurk’s, attempting the same dire deed.

By the end of 1899, the dance hall had received a truly grim reputation, and its proprietor, capitalizing on its reputation, began calling his joint McGurk’s Suicide Hall.

On the presidential campaign trail Trump boasted of his ‘success’ in Atlantic City, how he had outwitted Wall Street and leveraged his own name for riches. He would do for America what he had done for Atlantic City, he said. And so it came to be. Brian Rose has documented what remains of the city in the aftermath of the casino explosion. The images are haunting. Atlantic City will never recover. — Paul Goldberger

I will be doing a presentation and book signing of Atlantic City at Cooper Union on January 16th. The event will be held in the Rose Auditorium at 41 Cooper Square (East 7th Street). There will be a slide talk followed by a discussion and Q&A from the audience. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

This is a free event sponsored by the Cooper Union Alumni Association, and I will be donating 50% of the sales to the Cooper Union annual fund. Cooper is well on the way back to free tuition, and your purchase at the event will help make that possible.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Atlantic City — Brian Rose
Book Discussion and Signing

Cooper Union
Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Square (East 7th Street)
New York City

Thursday, January 16th
6:30pm – 8:00pm

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

One of the goals for my recent trip to Berlin was to do a series of pictures describing the documentation site known as the Topography of Terror. Of all the many locations in this city layered with history, this is the most profoundly sobering. This was the epicenter of the Holocaust. The place where the Nazi policy of genocide was formulated and implemented. Quoting Wikipedia, “It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 was the SS Reich Main Security Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo.”

The buildings forming this ensemble facing Wilhelmstrasse and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse were damaged during the bombing of Berlin in World War II and were later demolished. When I first encountered the site in 1985 it was a vast open wasteland adjacent to the Berlin Wall and half of it was used as an off-road driving track. In 1987, the freshly excavated foundation walls of the SS/Gestapo buildings were used as a backdrop for an exhibition about the site and its role central to the Holocaust.

Excavated foundation wall, 1987 — © Brian Rose

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

The photographs above show the same stretch of Berlin Wall with the former Nazi Reichsluftfahrtministerium (air ministry) and the excavated wall of the SS/Gestapo buildings. Both walls are now protected from damage.

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

For me, the most powerful aspect of the Topography of Terror is that it a relatively raw site with preserved ruins and open landscape. Much of the grounds have been covered with dark gray gravel, and a low steel and glass museum sits at the center. To the rear is an undisturbed wooded area with a path that partly follows the old automobile driving track.

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

Topography of Terror, 2019 — © Brian Rose

At this point, I have enough pictures of the Topography of Terror to stand alone as a series or serve as a “chapter” in my still unfinished Berlin book. The photographs are straightforward documents of the landscape and architecture consistent with the conceptual basis of the memorial itself. It is also consistent with my attitude about photography — that images should describe faithfully what one encounters — relatively unencumbered by artifice — open to the perspective of the viewer. Witness to the known and the unknowable.

Topography of Terror, 2014 — © Brian Rose

Borgata casino in Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Built on a barrier island, Atlantic City is increasingly prone to flooding, especially in areas that are home to lower income residents. Unless global warming is stabilized soon, the viability of Atlantic City is in serious jeopardy. A well-researched insightful article about Atlantic City in the online journal Climate Central lays out the problems and dire prognosis for this resort community.

Raising three children on Arizona Avenue, Gitto and his wife have been unemployed since the closure last year of Trump Taj Mahal, where they worked. He said the flooding has become unbearable but property prices are so low that they feel trapped.

My heart goes out to this town — one wants to root for people struggling to make things work — but the politicians, both state and local, have stripped this place bare for their own benefit. The Trumps and Icahns, and the Wall Street banks that lent the money, have all fattened their purses while the poverty rate has almost doubled — to 40% — since the introduction of casino gambling. Remember, casinos were supposed to save Atlantic City.

On Arizona Avenue, residents say they feel abandoned by all levels of government. Like an Appalachian coal town, many here depend upon a single industry — an entertainment sector that’s in decline, anchored by casinos that draw visitors to hotels, arcades, restaurants, gas stations and strip clubs.

Rebuilding the boardwalk in Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

All of America is now at the mercy of Donald Trump who abandoned Atlantic City and a political party that refuses to acknowledge the existence of man-made climate change, even as fires burn in California and the waters rise in the streets of this city and others. That’s why I made my book. To do what I can. Atlantic City is in big trouble. We are all in big trouble.

Purchase on Amazon

Remnant of 1961 Berlin Wall

⁣In a small wooded area tucked in behind the S-Bahn tracks in the north of the city is the only remaining stretch of the original 1961 Berlin Wall. It was discovered recently — hidden in plain sight — and confirmed by historians. You can just make out the Y-shaped brackets for stringing barbed wire to the left. ⁣ ⁣⁣ ⁣

The wall ruins are now fenced off to protect the historic landmark from damage, and moreover, the terrain is very rugged and full of holes hidden by the overgrowth. With my Berlin friend Anamarie —the two of us creative comrades-in-arms over the years — we slipped in through a gap in the fence and I made photographs.⁣

Berlin Wall remnants

To the south of the city along Pushkinallee I came across two slabs of the Berlin Wall overgrown with vines. This was a stretch of the border that followed a canal connected to the Spree River. Below is a view of the Spree with the sculpture, Molecule Man, by Jonathan Borofsky.

The Spree River

The Berlin Wall — © Brian Rose

I am in Berin for the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Wall. As many of you know, the former East/West border was the subject of one of my books — The Lost Border — and I have continued to photograph the transformation of Berlin since the Wall opened.

Billboard announcing 30th-anniversary events — © Brian Rose

I won’t be attempting to photograph any specific events relating to the anniversary — peripherally, yes — there are all kinds of exhibitions and installations around the city, both serious and kitschy.

Postdamer Platz — © Brian Rose
Topography of Terror — © Brian Rose

In a steady drizzle, I took pictures most of the day. Above is the former Nazi Lluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) with the Berlin Wall and the foundation wall of the former Gestapo/SS headquarters. This has always been a compelling view — and I have a similar picture of it from 1987 when the Wall was very much a real barrier — it is particularly arresting now because the exhibition panels have been temporarily removed from along the walkway below.

The Museum of Modern Art — Picasso and Ringgold — © Brian Rose

The Modern’s core collection of paintings from Van Gogh to Cezanne is presented in the newly renovated museum more or less as it was before, with the grand procession leading to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Picasso, a painting I have always regarded as one of the most radical breaks in the history of art. It remains a shocking presence — formally, conceptually, psychologically. Adjacent to the Picasso in the same gallery is a larger canvas by Faith Ringgold vividly depicting a 1960s race riot loosely based on the composition of Guernica, the monmumental anti-war painting by Picasso that once hung in the museum.

It’s the first moment in the recently re-opened MoMA where the curators introduce a disjunction in the traditional narrative of the development of modern art. It’s intended — presumably — as a symbolic stand-in for Guernica and a signal of a more inclusionary attitude about race, gender, and politics. It’s the only non-Picasso in this particular gallery.

Stieglitz photos and architectural articles — © Brian Rose

The museum was often criticized in the past for presenting a canon of modernism that was white male and Euro/American-centric. While the path forward remains chronological, the curators have boldly mixed everything together. Photography, film, architecture, painting, and sculpture are all displayed in the same galleries. So, next to late 19th century paintings there is a wall of early photography. Below a series of Stieglitz images of Manhattan skyscrapers there are architectural journals from Germany and the Soviet Union, and in the same gallery,  models and drawings of early 20th century skyscrapers. There are large video screens showing early silent films in the midst of paintings and photographs.

By breaking up the traditional silos and mixing and matching media, the curators are freed from the old constraints and can present a more diverse and discursive narrative of the development of modern art. That’s the idea, anyway. But the reality, for me, is that a team of curators has taken over the museum. Didacticism rules over discovery. Diversity overwhelms individual achievement. And one kind of orthodoxy has been replaced with another.

The Museum of Modern Art —  Hopper painting and Burkhardt photos — © Brian Rose

Photography, in particular, is missing in action in the new Modern. One of the things that kept me going back to the museum was to visit the photography department where one could see the touchstones of the medium’s development, where individual exhibitions were often mounted adjacent to the permanent collection. That’s gone now. One has to navigate the entire museum to find the photographs on display. Something I have no intention of doing in the future. There are no architecture galleries either — a great loss.

I was enormously pleased, however,  to see the series of Rudy Burkhardt photographs of the landscape of Astoria and Long Island City. This body of work, made in 1940 depicting vacant lots, gas stations and urban bric-a-brac, I have long regarded as important and largely overlooked. What I don’t need to see is a glowing Hopper painting of a gas station next to Burkhardt’s more astringent views of a similar scene. It’s a false equivalency, or at least a strained one.

While it’s true that photography and architecture — any of the various media — are not islands unto themselves, it is also true that each has its own history and its own unique integrity. The photography department of MoMA, a historically important entity, has been instrumental in bringing the medium into the mainstream of the art world. But it did that to a great extent by cultivating its own garden within the larger landscape. Technology and conceptual shifts in thinking about art have softened the garden boundaries for sure – photography is now cringingly referred to as lens-based art — but it would seem that the curators of MoMA by blurring all the lines, are diminishing everything. We are now in a multi-disiplinary world of competing narratives, and we are nowhere.

Going back to the Faith Ringgold painting adjacent to Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. I admire the intention, but I resist the heavy-handed curatorial statement behind it. I’d rather come across the Ringgold somewhere else in the museum — with the reference to Guernica in the caption — and be allowed to make the visual connection back to Picasso, back to the Guernica and its history in MoMA, on my own terms.

Atlantic City, abandoned Trump Plaza

As far back as 1981, Louis Malle said that his film “Atlantic City could be a metaphor for things going wrong all over America.” And recently the New Republic opined that “The closure of Trump Taj Mahal casino is a giant metaphor for Trump’s America.”

The New Republic

Atlantic City is a metaphor for America at large. That is one of the principal themes of my book about this fabled – and troubled – resort city. Corruption has long been at the heart of the enterprise going all the way back to Prohibition. Although Atlantic City may have invented the idea of the speakeasy where illicit activities are hidden in back rooms, the reality is that everyone knew what was going on, especially local law enforcement — and politicians — who were in on the scheme.

The Knife and Fork Inn

Standing where Atlantic, Pacific and Albany Avenues converge, the Knife & Fork was originally established in 1912 by then Atlantic City Mayor William Riddle, the Commodore Louis Kuehnle, and their cronies as an exclusive men’s drinking and dining club. 

Knife and Fork Inn website

When casinos were legalized in Atlantic City, the graft went big time and mobbed-up real estate developers like Donald Trump moved in, sucked out money, and left the city littered with abandoned buildings and vacant lots. Everyone knew who Donald Trump was then and now. But it didn’t matter as long as the politicians and corporate thieves benefited.

City Hall, Atlantic City

Mr. Gilliam joins a long list of Atlantic City politicians who have criminal records. Among them, former Mayor Robert Levy pleaded guilty in 2007 to lying to the government about his military record to increase his veterans benefits.

The Wall Street Journal

Atlantic City became an institutionalized kleptocracy. When Donald Trump made his astonishing leap from reality TV star to President, he brought the casino ethos of Atlantic City with him trashing the ideals of democracy along the way. Those ideals now stand abandoned like the rubble of Atlantic City while Trump’s supporters, mesmerized, play the slots all night long, taking their momentary gains, while knowing, ultimately, they will lose everything before the morning comes. If it comes at all.

Playground Pier

In January of 2016, after a winter storm flooded parts of the Jersey coastline, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, then a candidate for president, sarcastically asked whether he should “pick up a mop” to help with flooding—a remark that was criticized by environmentalists for being out of touch with the gravity of the situation. Christie accepts that human activity contributes to climate change, but contends that the issue “is not a crisis.”

National Geographic

Meanwhile, back in the real Atlantic City things go on as before. The mayor gets in a brawl in a casino parking garage. The mayor is convicted of embezzling money from a youth basketball program. The mayor resigns and is replaced by a rival with an arrest record. Revenue is up over last year in the casinos because of the introduction of sports betting. Hooray! And the Atlantic Ocean waves creep ever closer to the boardwalk.

 Atlantic City — available for purchase on Amazon

Trump Human Resources Office, Atlantic City

Today, September 24th, 2019 will be remembered as the day Donald Trump’s stolen presidency began to crumble. The president himself is holed up in Trump Tower — after his desultory appearance at the UN — as Nancy Pelosi announces the initiation of impeachment proceedings.

Just a short time ago I began photographing Atlantic City and Trump’s failed legacy. The pictures in my book describe a damaged urban landscape — extreme poverty and extreme wealth juxtaposed. The blame goes first to the politicians who concocted the casino gambling model as a way to save the crumbling resort city. It was never a serious solution. It was a kleptocracy disguised as a solution.

That’s where Trump came in — as a modern-day robber baron propped up by Russian mafia money. When he left his casino empire around 2014 to 2016, Atlantic City had a higher unemployment rate than it did when he arrived. It had fewer homeowners than when he arrived. Crime had worsened. Property taxes had gone up, and abandoned houses and vacant lots littered the landscape.

Despite the glaring evidence of his failure in Atlantic City, along with his clear obligations to shadowy foreign leaders, the American public — not a majority, but enough — voted for someone who would forever stain the honor of this country. They gambled away the American dream on a charlatan and a traitor.

Atlantic City — available for purchase on Amazon.

Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post

The image above, taken a few days ago, is the way Trump wants to be seen — from a low angle — powerfully commanding the spotlight, microphones thrust forward to record his pronouncements, alone on the White House lawn, half shouting over the clatter of helicopter rotors.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

All the pictures tend to look more or less the same. The president orchestrating the press gaggle assembled in front of him, unseen out of frame except for the boom mics. Even as he admonishes them as fake news, he basks in the attention, the warm bath of power and glory. The press at once resistive and complicit. The boundary between real and reality TV erased in perfect symbiosis.

Stephanie Grisham/White House Press Secretary

Here’s a different, perhaps more truthful, view of the same moment, a view that breaks the fourth wall of reality TV. It was taken, ironically, by Stephanie Grisham, the newly anointed press secretary, twice arrested drunk driver, replacement for the execrable Sarah Huckabee Sanders who has moved over to Fox News, the propaganda organ of the Trump regime.

From her somewhat distant remove she captures the whole sun-dappled scene peering through the trunks of a tree on the White House grounds. The tree introduces a slightly voyeuristic note as if we are spying, partly obscuring our view of the proceedings. One can almost hear Trump barking, the reporters shouting out questions, the camera shutters chattering.

The members of the press are assembled on a tiered grandstand — there are three rows — the sound recorders squatting on the first rung arms outstretched thrusting their mics forward. The videographers, photographers, and scribes are mixed together on the next two levels. Trump, who has just exited Marine One, stands close to his interlocutors, perhaps the better to hear and be heard, or perhaps, to physically crowd the space between him, the media, and his unseen millions of viewers. Trump stands so close, pitched awkwardly forward in his shoe-lifts, that the photographers have to go wide with their zooms which exaggerate Trump’s size in relation to the sylvan landscape beyond.

The reality is that the president’s stature diminishes daily. We are, possibly, in the waning days of Trump’s stolen presidency. His words ramble, his mind meanders, his anger boils, his voracious hunger for validation remains unsatisfied, and his grip on reality slips inexorably toward oblivion.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

Returning from a week’s vacation in Amsterdam, we visited the newly restored TWA Terminal at JFK airport. At least once, decades ago, I passed through this glorious survivor of the early days of air travel. I remember it then as a bit shabby with numerous visual intrusions grafted onto Aero Saarinen’s flowing architecture. The terminal has now reopened as a hotel connected to JetBlue’s JFK hub.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

The exterior of the terminal has been beautifully preserved, but the dark-windowed hotel structures standing between TWA and the surrounding JetBlue terminal create a claustrophobic space for Saarinen’s sculptural masterpiece, which once stood open to the tarmac and the sky.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

Half of the rooms appear to face JetBlue, and the other face inward toward TWA. Some rooms look out onto the airfield — those are the rooms to get. The architects were obviously trying to make the hotel wings neutral and unobtrusive. They are neutral, but not exactly unobtrusive.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

The curving driveway out front still allows for cars to pick up and drop off in proper 1960s style. Above, my son Brendan, wearing an appropriately themed NASA shirt,  and my wife Renee pose before a vintage Lincoln Continental.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

TWA was, of course, originally an airport terminal, not a hotel. So, one has to accept the tradeoffs involved. Nevertheless, I could do with fewer theme-y gestures like the uniformed greeters in the main hall and a bank of ’70s era phone booths. The place felt a little under-populated while we were there during lunchtime, and I worry that the hotel will fail to draw enough business. The slender tubes that once led to the TWA gates, now serve as connectors to JetBlue’s terminal. But the entrances are hard to find, and the signage inadequate.

TWA Hotel, JFK airport, New York — © Brian Rose

The TWA Terminal is one of the masterpieces of 20th-century architecture. It should probably be a memorial to the golden age of aeronautics instead of a hotel. But if a hotel, drop the kitsch and run it like a real place.

Don’t miss it. It’s well worth a special trip or a detour before or after your next JFK flight.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the apparent business connections between Jeffrey Epstein and his brother Mark, the former chairman of the Cooper Union board of trustees. Obviously, with the shocking death of Jeffrey in federal detention, the story has mushroomed and attention has shifted to the orbit of figures surrounding Jeffrey including his brother Mark.

My suspicions about Mark have been confirmed now by multiple reporters working for Crain’s, Business Insider, the Daily Beast, New York Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Gretchen Morgenson, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is on the story for the Journal and vows “to get to the bottom of it.”

From the Journal article:

“Mark Epstein started a number of businesses, including a silk-screen T-shirt company, called Izmo, that he created in 1986, incorporation records show. There was Atelier Enterprises Inc., a charter/leasing company he headed in 1984; Epstein Acquisitions, set up in 1987 and dissolved in 2015; and Saint Model and Talent, incorporated in 2005. He has previously said he began investing in New York real estate in the early 1990s.”

“By the late 2000s, he became a major donor to Cooper Union, the New York art, architecture and engineering college from which he graduated in 1976. By 2009, he had donated between $500,000 and $999,000 to the school, according to a donor report published by the college. That year, he was named chairman of its board of trustees; he resigned from the board in 2015, following the board’s controversial decision to drop the school’s longstanding policy of full tuition scholarships for all students.”

How one goes from silk screening T-shirts to owning multiple buildings in Manhattan remains a mystery that none of the articles solve. The one thing that is clear, Mark’s building on East 66th Street was a nexus of Jeffrey’s nefarious activities.

A tenant of East 66th Street quoted in the Daily Beast:

“The only person that I remember for sure being here was Jeffrey,” said the tenant, who said she later called Jeffrey Epstein about a building maintenance matter, assuming he was the owner. “I do not actually remember ever meeting Mark Epstein.”

Director D.A. Pennebaker in 2000.Kathy Willens/AP

D.A. Pennebaker, one of the leaders of cinema verite, and the maker of “Don’t Look Back,” the groundbreaking documentary about Bob Dylan, died yesterday at 94. I was privileged to take a class from Pennebaker while at Cooper Union in the late 70s. He was one of a number of extraordinary, inspiring professors I encountered there — influences that I carry with me always.

Pennebaker wasn’t exactly a great teacher. The class was held in his studio, and he mostly showed films and talked non-stop. I remember trying to interject comments into the stream of his monologues without success. Even questions were hard to get in. But what he had to say was worth paying attention to. He was intense, but at the same time warm and likable.

The kind of filmmaking he espoused, cinema verite, or direct cinema, was still relatively new at that time and had its detractors. The question was, and remains,  is it possible to maintain a neutral stance as an observer — to be a fly-on-the-wall and nothing more. The same goes for still photography. It’s a question I continue to wrestle with.

Some years later, my friend Suzanne Vega, the songwriter,  was working with Pennebaker on a promotional film. She was doing a special appearance at Speakeasy, the tiny folk club in Greenwich Village. At one point she took me aside and said “Brian let me introduce you to D.A. Pennebaker,” assuming that I would be thrilled to meet the esteemed documentarist. I reminded him that I was one of his former students at Cooper and we yakked for several minutes as if we were old friends. Suzanne was a bit stunned, as I recall.

I realized at that moment, talking with him in a closet-sized dressing room at Speakeasy, that someone with a personality as voluble as Pennebaker’s could never have been a true fly-on-the-wall. He was hardly the invisible cameraman that I had imagined trailing Dylan on tour in England. That revelation does not necessarily detract from my admiration of “Don’t Look Back,” but I now understand better the contradictions and complexities of that film and others like it.