I went with my ICP class, Photographing New York, the Lower East Side, down to Orchard Street for a group shooting expedition. One of the goals of the class is to produce a book of our photographs using Blurb, the online book service. Normally, there are ten sessions, but thanks to Hurricane Sandy, the time frame has become rather compressed. So, rather than waiting for each student’s individual projects to take shape, I decided that we would work together on two specific LES locations, over a two week period.

On Monday we spent three hours shooting Orchard Street from end to end–Houston Street down to Division Street. Orchard remains the Lower East Side’s most iconic street, it’s 19th century architecture relatively intact, and it is the location of the Tenement Museum. The day was sunny and very warm for this time of year–in the 60s. I shot pictures along with the class using my pocket digital camera. Here are some of my photos:

Orchard Street — © Brian Rose

Rivington at Orchard Street — © Brian Rose

Orchard Street — © Brian Rose

Orchard Street — © Brian Rose

Orchard Street — © Brian Rose

Orchard and Division Street — © Brian Rose

Additional photos here. 

On the bus, the Lower East Side — © Brian Rose

The event at Van Alen Books went well on Friday evening. A small crowd, but a very cool place, where the tiered levels normally used to display books, turns into seating space. I did a slide presentation of Time and Space on the Lower East Side and then engaged in conversation with Sean Corcoran, photography curator of the Museum of the City of New York.  I’d like to thank the folks at Van Alen  for having me, and Sean for his participation.

Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia — © Brian Rose

I made a quick escape from post-Sandy New York to get to a burial service in Richmond, Virginia for my aunt and uncle–my aunt died recently–and their ashes were buried together according to their wishes. It was difficult getting out of New York in the aftermath of the storm, but I was able to book a flight to Washington, D.C., and then drive to Richmond.

The burial was in Hollywood Cemetery, a historic, dramatically gothic landscape of rolling hills, perched on a bluff overlooking the James River. It was a crisp fall day, the trees in full color.

Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia — © Brian Rose

Richmond skyline and the James River — © Brian Rose

I arrived at the burial service just as it was about to begin, and hastily parked my car down the hill away from the small knot of family and friends assembled by the grave site. After the service I retrieved my car, which was standing next to an odd grouping of statues decorated with several confederate flags, and realized to my surprise that this was the grave of Jefferson Davis, the one time president of the Confederacy.

Grave of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy — © Brian Rose

As I drove out of the cemetery I came across a huge stone pyramid built in memory of the Civil War dead. There were more confederate flags scattered about the stones, and as much as I understand the complex historic symbolism of the flag, the sight still gives me a chill. I find it hard to separate the flag from its connection to slavery and the lingering presence of racism in society–and the atmosphere around the current presidential election only sharpens that awareness.

Monument dedicated to Civil War dead — © Brian Rose

I express these reservations in light of my own family history, some of which I’ve only discovered in recent weeks. My mother’s side of the family traces its roots to Mississippi, and my great great great grandfather was killed at the battle of Vicksburg. For all I know, there is a stone marker for him down there, like one of these in Hollywood Cemetery.

Update: I checked. There is a marker in Vicksburg for my ancestor.

Hollywood Cemetery plaque — © Brian Rose

The plaque above, placed next to the pyramid reads:

Perry Avenue, The Bronx — © Brian Rose

Visual non sequitur.

Grand Street, Soho — © Brian Rose

There’s hope in sight with ConEd’s Twitter statement that power should be back on in lower Manhattan Friday or Saturday. Although Halloween was essentially cancelled, things were still pretty spooky in the zombie zone between “Psycho path and Boo lvd ( see above).”  Stoplights are not working, which means that pedestrians and cars are playing a potentially lethal game of chicken. Food is scarce, and downtowners wander in search of a charge for their phones. On the one hand it’s mostly about temporary inconveniences–on the other hand there are numerous elderly and disabled people stuck in high rises. As I understand it, volunteers are going door-to-door checking on people, bringing water and other supplies. Meanwhile, uptown, everything is open and people are shopping.

And a pet peeve: I hate, hate, hate, seeing all the artsy faux film instagram pictures of hurricane damage.

Soho after Hurricane Sandy — © Brian Rose

The thing that isn’t adequately coming out in the media is that unless power is restored to lower Manhattan soon, there will be humanitarian ramifications to deal with. There are no stores or restaurants open downtown below 25th Street. No supermarkets–only a few bodegas and/or delis, which do not have working refrigeration or the ability to replenish stock. The subways are not running. The streets are utterly dark at night, and elevators are not working.

For young, healthy individuals, this is all just a major inconvenience. Above 25th, the city is bustling. But for thousands of elderly, less mobile people, the situation is undoubtedly getting dire.

Soho after Hurricane Sandy — © Brian Rose

The hurricane seemed rather benign at first, the winds not too ferocious, but eventually the water began to rise in New York Harbor. As a result, all of lower Manhattan is without power, the streets are largely empty, and with few cars on the streets, an eerie quiet has descended. My studio on Stanton Street just off the Bowery is completely dark inside, and you need a flashlight to get up the stairs. The water has receded in most places, but the entire subway system is shut down, stores and restaurants are closed, as are most office buildings, and ATMs do not operate. At the moment, things are manageable, but if the power remains off for another day, things are likely to get pretty dicey. We spent a few hours walking around this afternoon, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan on foot. I am posting this from Williamsburg, which thankfully, did not lose power during the storm.

Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street — © Brian Rose

Coming out from teaching my class at ICP in Midtown.

Jane’s Carrousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

Tassafaronga Village, David Baker + Partners, Oakland, California — © Brian Rose

In today’s New York Times, architecture critic Michael Kimmelman reviews two mixed income housing projects in the San Francisco Bay Area designed by the architect David Baker. Although Baker’s work has been published in various professional magazines, his profile outside of the Bay Area has remained relatively low. Low, in spite of the fact that Baker has achieved something few others have even tried–to bring sophisticated design to the task of providing housing for low and middle income people.

© Brian Rose

Tassafaronga Village in Oakland, California is a large complex of mostly new buildings that replace a troubled housing project set in the middle of neighborhood of small houses, factories, and stacks and stacks of rail containers. It’s a tough area, lying in the shadow of Oakland Colosseum where the Athletics and Raiders play, and crime is high.

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

There are several aspects to the project. One is a single building situated behind the undulating facade that you see above. It contains low income apartments grouped around a courtyard. Entry is through a spacious lobby, seen above. Some of the street side apartments have individual doorways.

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

Throughout the project there are solar panels mounted on masts, and in the shot above, a green roof can just be seen in the foreground. Other parts of Tassfaronga Village include townhouses facing streets with courtyards and walkways within and between the groupings of houses. Large galvanized steel farm troughs are used as planters.

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

While the houses do not attempt to mimic historic styles, they do evoke characteristics of Bay Area architecture, with bright yellows and reds punctuating the generally white, gray, and muted green palette.

© Brian Rose

There is limited parking on the street in the complex, but a bus loop connects to the nearby BART subway system.

© Brian Rose

An existing building–a former pasta factory–is integrated into the complex. Seen above, a sloping metallic mesh screens the windows along the south facing end of the building. The red door is a signature element found somewhere in almost of all of David Baker’s projects.

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

The question asked, and perhaps answered, in Kimmelman’s positive Times piece, is whether good design can enhance quality of life and even dampen social ills. It would appear so with Baker’s projects–for a number of reasons. One important one, is that there is always an active engagement with the street and with public spaces. The interior courtyards, playgrounds, and gardens encourage use, and can be easily watched over by surrounding windows. Baker does not plop down alien looking, monolithic blocks into the fabric of existing neighborhoods. His buildings look like they belong. However, his eclectic architectural vocabulary, which is as likely to quote European influences as American, is bracing and new.

Baker has rewritten the rules for subsidized housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Working with knowledgeable developers, he has helped transform whole neighborhoods of San Francisco and Oakland, and he has demonstrated repeatedly that low income housing can be integrated into the urban landscape. Every day I walk out of my building here in New York and am confronted by the dispiriting brick wall and windows of a subsidized housing project, typical of what is done in this city and around the country. Tassafaronga Village, and other David Baker projects, shows another way forward.

Guggenheim Museum lounge — © Brian Rose

A few thoughts on the Rineke Dijkstra retrospective that closes today at the Guggenheim. I’ve seen enough, or rather, I’ve seen too much. I’m not sure whose fault this is: the art market, the art media, or our cultural obsession with celebrity. At some point the person and their work becomes objectified to such an extent that whatever originality there was, whatever spark of discovery was once seized upon, now seems static and neutered.

Part of the problem for me may be the inherently totemic nature of Dijktra’s portraits along with the serial nature of much of her work. They are a bit like the Bechers’ images of building types in their frontal, decontextualized isolation of the subject. Like the Bechers work, however brilliant, I yearn to be set free. To return to the world with all its messiness, it’s complexity, it’s overlapping chaotic craziness, a world to be navigated through, a world comprised of multiple view-points.

I was happy to see Dijkstra’s video piece made in two techno clubs in the 1990s. I hadn’t seen it before, which helped, and I like the slightly less hermetic representation of the infinitely awkward young people thrust before the camera. They are human specimens, momentarily plucked from their environment, still squirming, alive. Am I comfortable with this kind of biology experiment? No. But comfort is, perhaps, beside the point, whether we’re talking about Arbus, Mapplethorpe, Ruff, Dijkstra, or a host of other photographers.

But I can’t look at Dijkstra any more. Maybe it’s my fault, and I will get over it. There was a time I couldn’t listen to Bob Dylan any more, but that passed. Do I care any longer that her portraits look like Botticelli or Dutch masters? No. Everyone from Sherman to Goldin  to Wall seem to be obsessed with making photography look more like art–real art–than the recalcitrant stepchild photography has always been. There’s something tiresome going on here, no matter how talented these artist/photographers are.

So, I’ve seen the Dijkstra (mid-career) retrospective–she’s only 53 with lots more to do I’m sure–and have the book. But I’ll be taking a break from this work for a while.

Delancey and Norfolk Streets — © Brian Rose

Delancey and Norfolk Streets — © Brian Rose

A few seconds apart.

Delancey and Clinton Street — © Brian Rose

On Saturday I went to the NY Art Book Fair at PS 1 in Queens. All kinds of art publishers from big to small, serious to silly, or both simultaneously. The museum was jammed with people, the galleries uncomfortably hot–how can this many people be interested in arcane and esoteric artists’ books? And where does all the money come from, since obviously, very few can actually make money on books of this sort. I don’t know whether to be encouraged or depressed about the whole thing.

I introduced myself at a number of photography publisher’s tables, showed my book around, felt like an outsider more than a participant in this book publishing mania. Watched people’s jaws drop when I told them I had sold more than 500 books since releasing Time and Space on the Lower East Side at the end of May. With no distribution. Nevertheless, few people I talked to were familiar with my book despite its getting a fair amount of publicity. The photography crowd is still not clued in, and I obviously have a lot of work to do.

23rd Street and Fifth Avenue — © Brian Rose

Would like to see an exhibition of photographs of the Flatiron Building.

I’m not sure what the meaning of it is, but Blake Andrews in his blog B has created a compass graphic locating a bunch of books that have geographical titles. I am pleased to find Time and Space on the Lower East Side over on the right. Lower east, of course.

It strikes me, as I go about marketing my book, that there are actually very few current art photography books that deal with New York City. A couple of book buyers have mentioned it. Another buyer rejected my book saying it was too New York specific. An attitude that somehow assumes New York to be a narrow subject not relevant to his region–Texas. The reality is that Time and Space is doing well with non-New Yorkers and foreigners. Moreover, the Lower East Side is the great immigrant neighborhood of American history, and today, it continues to be a bellwether of where we are going in New York and beyond.

There are undoubtedly many photographers doing interesting book-worthy work here in New York. The fact that this work is not finding its way into finished books available to the general public speaks to the present lack of options for photographers. There are only a handful of publishers located here in the city that could bring out this kind of content, and none are stepping up to the plate. On the one hand, there are more photographs being made than ever–frighteningly more than ever–and more photo books are being made as well. There’s a lot of action on Blurb and other self-publishing platforms, and there are lots of art books being made, few of which involve the kind of budgets that highly polished photo books require. Meanwhile, a relatively small number of well-known photographers continue to publish regularly. I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged.

The Lowline exhibition

Underneath the street at the foot of the Williamsburg bridge is an abandoned underground trolley storage facility. Until recently, few knew about this hidden space.

From the New York Times:
James Ramsey and Dan Barasch, come to the project with prestigious résumés (Yale and NASA in Mr. Ramsey’s case, Cornell and Google for Mr. Barasch). They want to convert the space into a subterranean park, using fiber-optic technology to channel in natural light — enough light, in fact, to allow photosynthesis to occur and, as a result, for plants to thrive.

The proposal is called the Lowline, named  to echo the High Line, the elevated park built on the old rail viaduct slicing through Manhattan’s westside. Ramsey and Barasch and a host of other supporters and collaborators have put together an exhibition in a disused market building adjacent to the trolley site. In it they have built a prototype of the sun collectors and created a mini landscape comprised of a tree, ferns, and moss. I had been somewhat skeptical of the concept until seeing the exhibit–I imagined the lighting being indirect and dim. But the actual impression is of a shaft of sunlight penetrating the darkness. An array of these collectors would produce an underground world brightly illuminated by daylight.

There are a lot of  reasons for the Lowline to fail–the fact that the Metropolitan Transit Authority owns the space and wants to maximize the value of this otherwise dead space. The cost of building and maintaining such an elaborate piece of infrastructure. The bureaucratic red tape inherent in any New York City project, no matter how straight forward–and this would be anything but straight forward.

On the other hand, more than 10,000 people have passed through the Low Line exhibition in two weekends, an extraordinary number. The project has clearly seized the imagination of the city and beyond.

While visiting the exhibit yesterday I met briefly with Margaret Chin, Lower East Side city councilwoman, who is supporting the project, and then spoke with Dan Barasch. He was familiar with my book Time and Space on the Lower East Side, and I suggested that there might be a way I could support their project through my photography. I would love to be involved in some way.