New York/Vaclav Havel


Czech/Austrian border 1987 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Vaclav Havel, playwright, political dissident, and former president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. When I traveled the Iron Curtain in 1985 and 1987, Havel and others who resisted the communist/Soviet hegemony of eastern Europe, was always in my thoughts. I skirted the Cold War border from the relative luxury of my rental car while Havel languished in prison or house arrest smuggling out statements and manifestos.

One such fundamental experience, that which I called “antipolitical politics,” is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long-term, and hard to measure; often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, conscience, and subconsciousness, and it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumed therein and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident-and I think that is an experience of an essential and universal importance-that a single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters.


Czech/German border 1985 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

It is becoming evident that even in today’s world, and especially on this exposed rampart where the wind blows most sharply, it is possible to oppose personal experience and the natural world to the “innocent” power and to unmask its guilt, as the author of The Gulag Archipelago has done. It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics and can, even today, have an undeniable political power. The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and addresses the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than entire brigades of hired propagandists can, though speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honoring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation.

Yes, “antipolitical politics” is possible. Politics “from below:’ Politics of man, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is not an accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. Under the “rule of everydayness” we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars. 

— Vaclav Havel


Suzanne Vega performs for Vaclav Havel — © Brian Rose

Some years later I found myself in Prague. It was 1990, one year after the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was meeting up with Suzanne Vega who was playing there and in East Berlin–incandescent performances both of them, fed by the still uncontaminated spirit of liberation in the air. I wrote here about them in my journal. I remember walking from the train station to the central square of Prague behind a group of teenagers singing the dut dut duts from Suzanne’s song Tom’s Diner. Again, years later, I met up with Suzanne in Olomouc in what was now the Czech Republic as she performed Tom’s Diner for Vaclav Havel over a video linkup. Havel was a fan, as he was of the old Velvet Underground and Lou Reed.

Here is, perhaps, the finest tribute to Havel on the 20th years of the Velvet Revolution in Prague on 17 November 2009:

New York/Lower East Side

I just completed teaching a class at ICP (International Center of Photography) called Photographing New York: The Lower East Side. It was a class based on photographing the neighborhood and then assembling a book of our work.

I knew this would be a challenging class in that we were doing everything–shooting, editing, selecting, and designing–all in a ten week timeframe. The students were of diverse backgrounds from all over the world, and had varying degrees of experience, from near beginners to some whose work was nuanced and sophisticated. But the idea was to present each at his or her best and to create a coherent, “real book” that we would all be proud of.

My teaching assistant Ed Cheng and I both participated in the book–Ed contributed images of Eldridge Street where he had grown up, and I took my view camera out on the Bowery adding to an ongoing collection of pictures of the rapidly gentrifying former skid row. Although I have no doubt that a class based entirely on photographing the Lower East Side with a critique at the end would result in good images, the knowledge that our photographs would all go into a publicly accessible book, in my opinion, elevated the conversation.

The students did a great job, many of them with little experience in making photos within tightly focused thematic or conceptual parameters, as well as working against a serious deadline. I think the results seen in the book speak for themselves.

I have been asked to teach the class again in the spring semester. So, anyone interested, keep an eye on the ICP class catalogue for further information (ICP School). I’ll post something here as well.

New York/WTC


Park Place — © Brian Rose

Friday evening I walked down to the World Trade Center with an invitation to the 48th floor of 7 WTC, the first completed structure in the rebuilding post 9/11. Silverstein Properties, the owner, has made the 48th floor available as an artists’ studio, though soon the occupants will have to make way for a paying tenant.


7 WTC, 48th Floor, painting by Marcus Robinson — © Brian Rose

The entire floor was unpartitioned and open with raw concrete floor, exposed fire proofed steel beams, and wrap around floor to ceiling windows with stunning views. At least four artists were on display including Marcus Robinson who is a painter and videographer. His time lapse images of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center were shown on a large video screen.


Paintings by Todd Stone — © Brian Rose

Another artist, Todd Stone, had a gallery-like exhibition of his paintings on one side of the floor documenting 9/11 as seen from his Tribeca studio. I usually don’t like to see images of the horror of 9/11 itself, but these were done as a spontaneous reaction to what was happening a short distance away, the paint somehow distancing the event while at the same time heightening the attention to it in a way that photographs do not.


View of 9/11 memorial — © Brian Rose

I took a few photographs through the windows, one looking down on the memorial–glass reflections unavoidable.  Stone has been doing paintings of the rebuilding, and he was working on one of the 1 WTC while I was there. I spoke with him for several minutes, and I traded one of my WTC books for one of his exhibition catalogues.


Painting by Todd Stone

Snow scene from the 48th floor with Diebenkorn-ish colors.


1 WTC model — © Brian Rose

A model of 1 WTC stood on the south end of the 48th floor adjacent to the real thing going up outside the window. The late afternoon sun just caught the translucent plastic of the model giving it a golden glow. The actual tower will never appear so crystalline I am afraid, despite its faceted exterior. But we shall see…

 

 

New York/Time and Space


Final cover design of Time and Space on the Lower East Side

Time and Space on the Lower East Side is now complete and on its way to the printer in Germany. My publisher tried to get a printer in New York, but none offered the price/quality proportion desired. It’s a sad testimony to American competitiveness that we have to go abroad for something that is ultimately done on widely available machines operated by  a small group of skilled technicians. Somewhat cheaper prices were available from Asia, but dealing with the distance and communication difficulties did not seem worth the trouble.

The design of the book is loosely based on the prototype I did with Blurb–the same image using the shadowed area for type. But Warren Mason of Measure Design made it much more elegant. We dropped the magenta type in favor of a yellow accented “Lower East Side.” However, the magenta has reappeared with a vengeance on the slipcover of the limited edition book. The message being this is not your father’s or grandfather’s Lower East Side in somber black and white.


Slipcase for the limited edition of Time and Space on the Lower East Side

The slipcase will be cloth covered with the type stamped into the material. The hardcover book, which will contain an 8×10 print will slide into the slipcase. These will be numbered and signed 1-100. I am hoping to make these available for sale on the website photo-eye and a few selected bookshops. The starting price will be $250. Due to the overall cost of production, the trade edition will be priced somewhat higher than $50–so those of you who donated to Kickstarter will be getting a nice discount.

I expect to get a production schedule soon and can then project a likely date for release of the book–both the regular trade edition and limited edition. I am guessing that I will have a small number of books sent by air in early January, and the rest of the press run will arrive  in late February shipped by boat. Hopefully, I will be looking at, and approving, proofs this month. As soon as I have the production schedule together, I will begin planning for the a book launch and other PR related activities.

Stay tuned for periodic updates.

New York/Van Cortlandt Park


Van Cortlandt Park — © Brian Rose

Quotes from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website:

The Wiechquaskeck Lenapes occupied this site when, in 1639, the Dutch East India Company brought the first Europeans to settle in the Bronx. In 1646, Dutchman Adriaen Van Der Donck (1620-1655) became the first single owner of what is now Van Cortlandt Park. His vast estate “de Jonkeerslandt” gave Yonkers its name. The land passed through several families, each gradually developing it into viable farmland and a working plantation. During the 1690s, the 16-acre lake was created when Tibbetts Brook was dammed to power a gristmill.


Van Cortlandt Park — © Brian Rose

The Van Cortlandt name was first associated with the tract of land bounded by modern Yonkers City Line between Broadway, Jerome Avenue, and Van Cortlandt Park East in 1694, when Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought the property. The Van Cortlandt Mansion was built in 1748 by his son, Frederick Van Cortlandt, whose family occupied the land until the 1880s. Frederick also established the family burial plot on Vault Hill where, at the onset of the American Revolution, City Clerk Augustus Van Cortlandt hid the city records from the British Army.


Pizza place at the Van Cortland Park subway stop — © Brian Rose

My New York park photographs: New York Primeval

 

New York/WTC


Greenwich Street near the World Trade Center  (4×5 negative) — © Brian Rose

I’ve been catching up on scanning recent 4×5 negatives from the Bowery and the World Trade Center, my two current projects. The image above was made a few months ago and was taken a couple of blocks from ground zero. A fence displays the list of names of those killed on 9/11–The Heroes of September 11, 2001 it reads–and the steel containers behind hold contractor offices or equipment storage related to the nearby construction site. The names are now found at the completed 9/11 memorial, etched in stone.

Closeup from image above — © Brian Rose

It is an image that I find particularly satisfying–the multiplicity of layers, materials, colors–a telling detail, the 9/11 list, that gives larger context and raison d’etre. The emptiness of the streets seems almost unreal in such a densely built place. It’s not a photograph I’d likely take with a small camera–or at least thinking through the medium of a small camera. It is an image made with the assumption that details will read even when printed large, or especially when printed large. The computer screen gives only an impression of what would be there in a higher resolution print.

Please click through to larger images.

 

 

New York/Houston Street


Houston and Bowery with Keith Haring  re-creation, 2008 — © Brian Rose

A year ago I discovered the origins of the Houston/Bowery wall, a slab of concrete that hosts a regularly changing display of graffiti and street art in various media. The wall always seemed odd to me because it was free standing and stood a couple of feet away from the party wall of the building behind it. Where did it come from?


Ray Salyer in On the Bowery, handball court behind

The answer came on a visit to Film Forum when I saw the great quasi-documentary film On the Bowery made in 1957 by Lionel Rogosin. In one of the scenes, Ray Salyer, the main character waits with a group of Bowery men looking to be picked up for day labor. Behind him a game of handball is being played against a detached wall, unmistakably the same wall that survives today, except that it is now encased in a more expansive and user-friendly surface. But underneath, the handball court wall remains.


Opening scene from Martin Scorcese’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door, 1967

Last week while putting together a slide show of Lower East Side images for a class I am teaching, I came across a video of the opening scene of Martin Scorcese’s first feature film Who’s That Knocking at My Door made in 1967. It’s a street brawl–a choreographed violent  dance–played out on the corner of Houston and Bowery in front of, you guessed it, the former handball wall, now graffiti wall.


Houston and Bowery, mural by Faile, 2011 — © Brian Rose

As you  can see in the film and in the photograph above, Houston Street was widened after 1957 and the distance from the street to the wall was reduced. So, it turns out this lowly urban artifact has quite a distinguished pedigree, not only as the canvas for the current series of murals, but as an architectural extra in two classics of American cinema.

New York/The Bowery


At Think Coffee on the Bowery — © Brian Rose

Thoughts over breakfast this morning–cognitive dissonance department.

Mario Batali, celebrated chef and restaurateur at a Time person of the year event:

“The way the bankers have toppled the way that money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands,” Mr. Batali said, “is as good as Stalin or Hitler, the evil guys” whom Time named Man of the Year long ago, Stalin in 1942, Hitler in 1938.

The internet lit up with indignation from Wall Street:  “Cancel all reservations at Batali’s eateries, including Babbo and Del Posto.” Yet another wrote, “Done with Batali restaurants.”

Article here.

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Meanwhile at Occupy Wall Street David Crosby and Graham Nash performed a five song set at Zuccotti Park. From a mostly snarky NYT article:

When the concert ended, to protracted cheers and vigorous finger-waggling, an oft-used signal of appreciation inside the park, Ms. Mandaglio spoke of the thrill of seeing a favorite group from a bygone era. She was asked what song of theirs she liked best. “The one they were playing before,” she said, taking a long drag on a cigarette as she dangled the sunflower between her fingers.

But she was not the best person to ask, Ms. Mandaglio added. She was really more of a Bob Dylan fan.

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And at Penn State University in response to the firing of famed football coach Joe Paterno and the forced resignation of the university president, students rioted overnight in downtown State College, Pennsylvania. Never mind that the ousters were the result of a grave mishandling of child sexual abuse.

Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked sport utility vehicle and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees.

Article here.

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