The Bowery and Great Jones Street — © Brian Rose

An auto repair holdout in the midst of increasing opulence on the northern end of the Bowery. A beautiful, mild, November day, I decided to go out with my view camera and just work this corner. Was there about an hour and shot four or five different views including the one above–this a digital snapshot version.

Houston and Mulberry Street — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

Grace Plaza, ICP Education entrance, West 43rd and Sixth Avenue  — © Brian Rose

I snapped this picture while leaving ICP after a session of my class Photographing New York: The Lower East Side. The students are photographing the neighborhood, and we will be creating a book from their work using Blurb, the online photo book service.

As for my own book Time and Space on the Lower East Side, we have just about finished the layout, and I am finalizing the images in Photoshop as well as making prints that can be used by the printer as a color guide. Today I spent most of the day sending out emails regarding my Kickstarter fundraising campaign. I am now 85% of the way to my goal with five days to go.

The Kickstarter project page is here.

Donate $50 to pre-order Time and Space on the Lower East Side. For $250 you can get the limited edition slipcover book–only 100 to be printed.

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UPDATE– Goal Reached!

Today, I reached 100% of my funding goal for Time and Space on the Lower East Side. I am grateful to all of you who donated–all of you who value independent photo books, who love New York and the Lower East Side, and who are making this book possible.

The reality is that few established publishers are willing to take on projects like this. Especially in these economic times. We, artists and those who support the arts, have to step up and make things happen ourselves. The $10,000 raised is only a part of the total cost of making a book of this quality. So, any further donations over the remaining five days of the campaign will be greatly appreciated.

The production of Time and Space is well underway. The sequencing of the photos and the text are complete, and the graphic designer is fine tuning the layout. Suzanne Vega has contributed the books’s forward–it’s very cool–you’ll enjoy it. The book will go to the printer in the next few weeks, and if all goes well, Time and Space will be out in the first part of 2012.

Thank you and hope to see lots of you when the book is launched!

Special thanks to the following blogs: EV Grieve, Curbed, and The Low-Down.

And thanks to Suzanne Vega and Kristin Ellington for their FB posts and spreading the word.

Time and Space is now largely done–I am still tweaking the images–and we are working on the last details of the layout. The book is based on the Blurb prototype that is still available, but with a more refined design and a tighter edit of the photographs. The new Time and Space will be larger (about 9×12 inches) and and will sell for a lower price. There will be a limited edition slipcover version of the book with an original print inside, which will be really beautiful and well worth collecting.

This is the final week of my Kickstarter campaign, and I am just over 50% of the way to my goal. This is your last chance to participate in this project by making a donation–at whatever level you are comfortable with. A donation of $50 gets you a copy of the book as soon as it is available, and $250 gets you the limited edition book. I have received several donations of $10, which makes me very happy. Some people have very tight budgets, but enjoy going on Kickstarter and sprinkling money around to projects they find worth supporting. I have donated to another project myself and plan to do more.

Please join in–your help is appreciated and needed. Thanks!

East Broadway/Catherine Street/The Bowery — © Brian Rose

As mentioned in an earlier post, I am presently photographing the Bowery, the historic street associated with New York low life from its early days as an entertainment district to its latter days as world famous skid row. The street runs only about a mile, so my intention is to photograph it in some detail. Since my studio is located just off the Bowery along the northern stretch of the street, it’s easy for me to start taking pictures and run out of film before I get very far. So, this morning I kept the camera backpack on my shoulders until I got down to Chinatown just below the Manhattan Bridge. I did a number of photographs with the 4×5 camera–these are from my pocket camera. It was a brilliantly clear morning, a little windy, but manageable.

Chatham Square and The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Looking south at Chatham Square one can see 8 Spruce Street, the Frank Gehry tower with its wavy steel curtain wall rising above the squat brick building housing NYPD headquarters. The glass building at left is typical of the new construction going up all along the Bowery. And a recent decision to de-landmark a nearby early 19th century house is likely to increase the pressure on other properties. The Bowery has always been a hodgepodge of architectural styles built at various different times, so freezing it in the present is not necessarily appropriate or practical. But if you look at the Bowery, many of the structures are relatively small–some of them built as townhouses–but most are now used for commercial purposes. The temptation to knock them down and replace them with new hotels and other multi-use buildings is ever mounting. The way things are going, much of the Bowery’s historic character will be lost.

The Bowery and Pell Street — © Brian Rose

Above is an example of  a former townhouse now used as a bank office. Anything with a pitched roof, of which there are probably a dozen on the Bowery, was built in the first part of the 19th century. A few are hiding behind false fronts, and other have had their heads lopped off. The 19th century house between 5th and 6th Streets next to the Cooper Square Hotel, which I have photographed, was torn down a few months ago.

East Broadway — © Brian Rose

After using up my film, I made a quick visit to the post office on East Broadway and took the photograph above looking through the front window to the street.

Broadway and Cedar Street — © Brian Rose

I went downtown yesterday to add more photographs to my ongoing WTC series. I took the 4×5 view camera, which now requires carrying individual holders for the film instead of the pre-packaged paper envelopes that I used for about 15 years. Both Fujifilm and Kodak have dropped those from the lineup, now that digital is pre-eminent, and Fuji has stopped making 4×5 film across the board.

I took the subway to Wall Street and walked a block or two up to Zuccotti Park, the primary location of Occupy Wall Street, the protest movement that has spawned similar actions in other cities across the country. I went with the intention of including the demonstration in some of my photographs, but not to attempt to document it per se. After all, the place is crawling with photojournalists and the media in general.  My approach, as usual, is more of a meta-documentation of events as they intersect with my main task, photographing around ground zero and the rising towers, particularly 1 WTC. More than once, other photographers looked at my equipment and referred to me as “a real photographer.”

From across Broadway I could readily see the police presence on the periphery of Zuccotti Park–various barriers and cones directed traffic on the street–which continued to flow unimpeded. Every few moments a double decker red tour bus would pass by the park and tourists’ heads would swivel in the direction of the demonstration. I set up my camera on Broadway and did a photograph looking toward the park with a brilliantly red Mark DiSuvero sculpture towering over it. The new glass buildings in the background reflected sky and each other creating a confusing constructivist composition. Red construction hoists slid up and down 4 WTC as if intended to complement the color scheme.

Trinity Place and Liberty Street — © Brian Rose

I only did three or four photographs in and around the park, but I was there about two hours, setting up the camera, and then waiting for things to happen. I talked to a number of people, some active participants, some tourists, others just passing through, but curious to see what was going on. As expected there are plenty of “professional activists,” the people who come to any and every march or protest aimed at established power. So, the casual observer might assume that the crowd is dominated by Marxist anti-U.S. fringe groups.

If this were actually the case, however, this demonstration would have been long over. It’s hard to get a handle on the composition of the crowd, but clearly, it is more diverse than usual for these kinds of things. At one point while I was there a contingent of union hard hats from the WTC construction site paraded through the park carrying an American flag. Another group of perhaps 20 marchers–young people, white and black–circled the park chanting “Stop, stop and frisk!” while almost the same number of NYPD blue shirts strolled along behind pied piper style. This was obviously an adjunct protest to the main Wall Street occupation demonstration. I talked briefly with a construction worker, a British tourist who was concerned about the economic future of Europe, and a person who had come specifically to see for himself what was going on. It’s the interest from outside the core group of demonstrators that seems to give  this rolling event momentum and importance.

I set my camera in the northwest quadrant of the park facing Liberty and Trinity Place with demonstrators and the curious in the foreground, and the sky filled with glass skyscrapers in the background. It was particularly satisfying to put my tripod down right at this spot where I had been accosted by security guards a few years ago who informed me that Zucotti Park–while open to the public 24 hours a day– was, in fact, a private park, and tripods were not allowed. The park–really a paved public square–is the product of  one of these zoning deals New York City is so fond of. Developers get more height or floor area in exchange for creating a public amenity, often of dubious merit. In this case, the park is definitely a welcome amenity among the forest of skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, and the city sees it as a win-win, since they do not have to take care of it–Brookfield, the owner, maintains the space. So, we have a public square which must be open to everyone round the clock, in which tripods are not usually allowed, now occupied by 500 demonstrators and their NYPD chaperones. The irony of it all is delicious.

Cedar Street — © Brian Rose

Speaking of ironies. The crowd in Zuccotti Park is comprised largely of local New Yorkers, many of whom are undoubtedly Jewish as evidenced by a portable Sukkah to honor the current holiday set up among various other tents and tarps. The right wing talking point that Occupy Wall Street is anti-semitic is laughable. The reason they link a Wall Street protest to Jews is because they are under the mistaken notion that the nation’s banks are run by Jews, which is demonstrably untrue–Goldman Sachs not withstanding.

Cedar Street — Brian Rose

From Zucotti Park I walked a short distance down Cedar Street and came to Greenwich with its sweeping view of the construction of the WTC. Dozens of visitors were lined up to enter the 9/11 memorial–which requires obtaining a ticket. I had a long chat with a police officer, a young Asian cop assigned to the WTC who was interested in my project. I did a few photos here before finishing for the day. One World Trade Center is now at least 2/3 of the way up.

Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

If you’re building your own sukkah, here are the basic materials you will need:

The Walls: The walls of a sukkah can be made of any material, provided that they are sturdy enough that they do not move in a normal wind. You can use wood or fiberglass panels, waterproof fabrics attached to a metal frame, etc. You can also use pre-existing walls (i.e, the exterior walls of your home, patio or garage) as one or more of the sukkah walls. An existing structure that is roofless or has a removable roof can also be made into a sukkah by covering it with proper sechach.

The Roof Covering: The sukkah needs to be covered with sechach—raw, unfinished vegetable matter. Common sukkah roof-coverings are: bamboo poles, evergreen branches, reeds, corn stalks, narrow strips (1×1 or 1×2) of unfinished lumber, or special sechach mats.

The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose (graffiti by Kenny Scharf)

The process of making photographs varies with different photographers. There are some who work within conceptual frameworks that require a great deal of calculation ahead of time. Others, like me, tend to think in projects that take in long time lines, or that slowly, image by image, explore the relationship between self and the outside world. However, in any case, there is usually an element of discovery–a path found–a thread identified and then pulled–a momentary recognition of something essential. Often, these discoveries are fleeting, provisional, trivial. Not exactly mind bending paradigm shifting stuff.

So, I pick up the paper this morning, as usual, and flip through the arts section, and land upon a review of a photography show–a rarity these days in the New York Times. It’s about the latest New Photography exhibit at MoMA. I was already aware of it mostly because I knew that Doug Rickard’s Google Streetview images are in the show. Rickard’s work is fascinating in that the images made are essentially available to all. He simply reframes the 360 degree  anonymous pans of the world glimpsed from Google’s ceaselessly cruising eye.

New York City, photo by Doug Rickard (via Google Streetview)

On the one hand, Rickard uses the images as social commentary, focusing primarily on the most neglected and down and out areas of the United States. There’s nothing new about photographing such areas. But on the other hand there is something different about seeing these places through a robotic lens–literally drive-by photography–seen voyeuristically as if through a roving security camera. Rickard has us gaze at the underbelly of society, at poor people, scary looking people, caught unaware by the camera, captured in the barrel distorted, light flared reality of Google–and we all become Big Brother in the process. Guiltily, I cannot stop looking at these disturbing images.

This is work that deserves a good deal of critical thought, and even soul searching. But as I begin to read Ken Johnson’s review of New Photography 2011 I am slammed dead in my tracks by this:

In the 1980s photography mutated into a monster that threatened to swallow fine art altogether. In the hands of artists like Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky and legions of copycats, photography parsed the day’s most urgent questions about representation, propaganda, truth and reality. But in the ensuing decades, the answers became increasingly routine, and today the beast that art photography was finds itself tired and toothless.

If you are searching for signs of rejuvenation in “New Photography 2011,” an exhibition of six artists at the Museum of Modern Art, you will look in vain. 

With that dispiriting introduction, Johnson then goes on to dutifully praise the work in the show including Doug Rickard’s “species of meta photography.” But why bother make the effort if none of the work offers signs of rejuvenation? Why saddle these photographers with this unfair and miserable burden? What a drag for Johnson to have to write this article. What a drag for us to have to read it. And now, excuse me while I resume my pointless search for relevance outside–or inside–I don’t know which–the tired and toothless art photography monster.

Madison Street under the Manhattan Bridge — © Brian Rose

A visually quiet moment in Chinatown–but the bridge above is never silent. Cars and trucks sound a constant din, and every few minutes a subway train clatters by, the squeal of steel wheels.

Cherry Street — © Brian Rose

Lost over Knickerbocker Village.

10th Avenue and 30th Street — © Brian Rose

Clarkson Street — © Brian Rose

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

WTC, East 4th Street — © Brian Rose

Steve Jobs • 1955-2011

Under the Standard Hotel on the High Line — © Brian Rose

Today is the first day of my class at ICP, Photographing New York: The Lower East Side. We will look at work, mine and the students. And talk about the Lower East Side, and how to approach making photos of the neighborhood. Beyond the geographical, the question is, what is place? And how can you define and describe it?

Please support Time and Space on the Lower East Side by clicking on the Kickstarter badge at right.

East 4th Street — © Brian Rose

White splash on 4th Street.

Please support Time and Space on the Lower East Side by clicking on the Kickstarter badge at right.

East 4th Street — © Brian Rose

My WTC mural during a street fair sponsored by FAB (Fourth Arts Block).

Clarkson Street — © Brian Rose

A commercial billboard commemoration of  the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Today I am taking the plunge and launching my kickstarter campaign to raise money for the publishing of Time and Space on the Lower East Side. Please watch the video and visit the project page on the kickstarter website.

The campaign will last 45 days and I hope to raise at least $10,000. Donate whatever you can. But for $50 you can make real contribution by, in effect, pre-ordering a copy of the book.

Time and Space is the culmination of a project that began in 1980 when I photographed the Lower East Side in collaboration with photographer Ed Fausty. We documented the neighborhood at its darkest but, perhaps, most creative time. While buildings crumbled and burned, musicians and artists worked to express the edgy quality of the place.

In 2005 I returned to photographing the Lower East Side working alone this time. The result is a book spanning three decades of history, originally available through Blurb the online platform for creating photo books. I am working now with Golden Section Publishing, a new independent publisher headed by photographer Bill Diodato. With your help, the book will be completed this year and available in stores and online early in 2012.

The WTC montage is up and it looks pretty cool. Don’t miss the opening reception this Wednesday. There will be nine WTC images on exhibit in the cafe, which is directly across the street from the installation. Hopefully, the weather will allow for outdoor mingling.

FAB cafe
77 East 4th Street
Wednesday, September  28
7-9PM

WTC, E4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue — © Brian Rose

WTC, E4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue — © Brian Rose