New York/Noho


Bond Street — © Brian Rose


Bond and Lafayette Streets — © Brian Rose

In the grip of a debt crisis brought on by Tea Party economic terrorism, New York appears placid at the start of the weekend–on the surface.  One imagines the agitated garden party conversations  out in the Hamptons among the captains of finance. How did the good faith and credit of the United States come to be held hostage by an ignorant rabble? The mind boggles. We all await Monday and the morning bell.

 

New York/ICP Class

I will be teaching a class this fall at ICP focused on photographing the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Each student will pick a subject, theme, or geographical area–I plan to shoot the Bowery with a 4×5 camera–and then we will design and print a book of the images using Blurb. This will be the coolest class ever. Go here for a pdf of the entire brochure. Below is a clipping:

 

 

New York/Lower East Side


Sarah D. Roosevelt Park — © Brian Rose

We visited the New Museum block party in Sarah Roosevelt park yesterday–despite the continuing heat. While I talked to David Mulkins, the director of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, an organization trying to save the historical character of the Bowery, Brendan, my son, busied himself creating a model tenement out of colored paper. His design is probably not what the preservationists had in mind–but I like it a lot.


BMW Guggenheim Lab — © Brian Rose

A few blocks north I snapped a few pictures of another example of cutting edge Lower East Side architecture, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a temporary structure to serve as a sort of interactive urban think tank. Exactly how it will function–besides being a cool object–I am not sure. Designed by Atelier Bow-Wow of Tokyo, the structure is described as a tool box from which things can be raised or lowered to the ground level.

I like the way the structure is inserted into a gap between a row of  tenements creating a passage linking E1st and Houston Street. I’ve photographed this gap and adjacent open space before–one image is in my book Time and Space on the Lower East Side.

Which brings me to my book. I have decided to work with a small New York publisher with the intention of bringing out Time and Space on the Lower East Side by the end of the year. I will provide more details later, once the deal is finalized, but I am confident that this will be a beautiful and successful book. It will require money, however, and I am planning to make use of Kickstarter, a web based fund raising platform for creative projects. I will, of course, let everyone know when the campaign is launched.

In the meantime, the current Blurb version of Time and Space remains available–but not for long. Once the new book is set into motion, the Blurb book will be withdrawn, never to appear again. Book collectors take note. The St. Mark’s Bookshop has a few signed copies.

New York/WTC


Steve Katzenbaum of CNN radio and Brian Rose

Yesterday I was interviewed by CNN radio for a piece they are doing about the loss of the Twin Towers on the city’s skyline and about the rapidly rising 1 WTC tower, which is intended to replace, visually and symbolically, the iconic presence of the former skyscrapers. I brought my WTC book with me, and talked about some of the pictures and answered questions from CNN correspondent Steve Katzenbaum.

We met in the small triangular park at Greenwich Street and Vesey Street just below 1 WTC. The tower appears about 2/3 of the way up. It’s a busy spot with commuters coming to and from the PATH station while gawking tourists and hard hatted construction workers commingle.

I don’t yet have a time and date for the broadcast, which I believe will be available as a podcast on the CNN website.

New York/Deep River, Connecticut


From E25th Street — © Brian Rose

Finished several photo shoots and then got out of town to join up with former members of the Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums performing at the annual Deep River muster in Connecticut. Some of us have a hard time keeping up our musical chops and remembering all the tunes, but we have enough who can still play admirably. Our sound remains unmistakable, famous within the fife and drum world.

Here we are on Main Street in Deep River:

We stopped at this spot on Main Street to duplicate a photograph taken of the corps back in the early 1960s, before my time. I joined in 1964. The photographer gestures for the banner holders (one of whom is my son Brendan) to move forward out of the shot.

Although we continue to perform music from the 18th century in an authentic style, that’s as far as it goes. No tri-cornered hats, knee breeches or buckled shoes. In fact, three of us marched sans shoes. I’m the tall one. From there we marched to Devitt Field where we opened the afternoon’s stand performances by playing the National Anthem. The present Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums does perform in full costume.

Back in New York on Sunday I replaced my dead Sigma DP1 camera with the newer DP1x. It’s not a perfect camera, but it produces astounding quality for something that fits in a pocket. Ability to shoot RAW files and a large sensor make the DP1 special. Sometimes sensor size is more important than megapixels. That’s the case with this camera.

New York/East New York


East New York — © Brian Rose

I spent the day in East New York photographing a new low income apartment building. It’s in a neighborhood of single family homes and other new apartment buildings. The big housing blocks that East New York is known for are some distance away. Not that many years ago, this area would have had a blown apart look with lots of vacant lots and abandonment. Things have changed substantially, but it is still a rough edged place. A glimpse of my project can be seen at far right above.


East New York — © Brian Rose

Across the street there was a large truck and bus repair shop and a woodworking shop. On the adjacent  corner a used car dealer and seller of gravestones.  Nearby, is a large “transit technology” school.


East New York — © Brian Rose

During the day, the area exhibits a fairly relaxed atmosphere, but the conspicuous use of window gates, fences, and other security measures, suggests a different aspect. And indeed, after dark the area showed a more menacing face. My assistant and I arrived by subway, carrying a camera case and small lighting kit, but chose to take a car service back. Nevertheless, with every new project of the kind I was photographing, the neighborhood becomes more stable and livable.

Washington, D.C./14th and T


Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, Washington, D.C. — © Brian Rose

I stayed in Washington with my family at a hotel on Dupont Circle. We walked up 18th Street through Adam’s Morgan, an ethnically diverse area I lived in briefly in the ’70s. Afterward, Brendan, my 12 year old son, insisted that we return to Ben’s Chili Bowl, a Washington icon that he and I visited a couple of years ago. This being the 4th of July, a line of tourists formed in the adjacent alley.


14th and T, Washington, D.C. — © Brian Rose

From Ben’s we walked down to the intersection of 14th Street and T, a corner mentioned in my song Open All Night. Today, the area has greatly gentrified–a sidewalk cafe and a high end furniture store occupy two corners. But the other corners remain partially empty and somewhat bedraggled. So, despite the upscale incursions, 14th Street still feels like it’s on the edge between one thing and another–which in D.C. usually means between white and black. The t-shirt above says I Am DC, I Demand the Vote, a reference to the fact that citizens of the District of Columbia are not represented in Congress, an inexcusable disenfranchisement of approximately 602,000 people.


14th and T, Washington, D.C. — © Brian Rose

Open All Night

Smoke blue breath in the window
Harsh lights and watery eyes
Burnt out butt out and out of sight
The deal goes down at moonrise

A newspaper blows through this tunnel of love
A tumbleweed in the city blight
Pissing neon in the pouring rain
Open all night

Skin green splitting in the back room
Still praying to God above
Dim names left back in the diner
All for a thimble full of love

There’s news of a murder up at 14th and T
And the waitress shivers with fright
As two cops tell a fish story
Open all night

She wipes the counter and she sweeps the floor
She makes the coffee and she asks do you want some more
She looks in the eyes of a desperate man
She can’t say much but she can understand
Another aimless loner
Another brittle voice
Another ghostly goner
His head in his hands
Open all night

And outside the street is a minefield
To the ex-soldier with the tattooed arm
A cigarette stuck on his lower lip
He thinks of his mom back on the farm

And thick thighs snicker behind him
She says boy you don’t have to fight
Come on home with me baby
I’m open all night

(© Brian Rose)

***

Here is my song:

Open All Night

***

Although I’m proud of my version of the song, go here for Lucy Kaplansky’s stunning performance.


14th and R, Washington, D.C. — © Brian Rose

From 14th and T we walked back to Dupont Circle, and ended the day watching the fireworks on the Mall.

Washington, D.C./Mt. Vernon


Mt. Vernon, Virginia — © Brian Rose

I drove north from Richmond to Washington, D.C. with my family. It’s the 4th of July weekend, so no escaping the crowds in D.C. We rented bikes and cycled down the Potomac to Mt. Vernon, George Washington’s plantation. It’s about 18 miles, the terrain not too difficult, but the temperature was well above 90, and about 3/4 of the way there I started to lose it. I’ve played enough summer basketball in the past to recognize the signs of heat exhaustion, and that’s what was happening. I walked up the final hill to Mt. Vernon–that’s why it’s called “mount” said my son Brendan–and got the necessary liquids into me.

We decided to take a tour of the house, but had to wait a couple of hours before a timed ticket was available. So, we found a shady spot under an immense elm tree at a distance from the other tourists and lounged on the grass. I got stung on the foot by a bee–another little setback–but it wasn’t too bad. After resting a while I roamed around the grounds and took a series of pictures.


Mt. Vernon — © Brian Rose


Mt. Vernon — © Brian Rose

At 5pm, our slot, and the last of the day, I asked a ticker taker how many people went through Mt. Vernon that day, and he said about 8,000. The tour is brief and they keep you moving, but the interiors are beautiful–no photos allowed–and worth seeing. Immediately afterward we mounted our bikes and headed off for the 18 miles back to D.C. My legs were tired, but I experienced none of the earlier day’s difficulty. As we approached Alexandria, to the south of D.C., menacing clouds and bolts of lightening moved in. We almost made it to the city, and shelter, but were caught in a crashing deluge and swirling winds. We managed to take partial shelter under an entrance to a parking garage in an apartment complex, but we were soaked through, and pretty much through all together.

More storms were headed our way. So we ditched our bikes at the Alexandria location of our bike rental company, and took the subway back into the city–wet, cold, exhausted, but pretty happy.

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia — © Brian Rose

I went to Williamsburg, Virginia for the third time in the past month and half to see my father who is recovering from surgery. He will be 90 on July 16, and it seems pretty clear that he will make it.

On the way north, traveling with my wife and son, we stopped briefly in Richmond, a city I’ve spent a good deal of time in years ago. Some of my earliest color photographs were taken in the area around Main Street Station, the historic train depot in downtown Richmond. For a long time the area was largely derelict with empty tobacco factories and warehouses, but many of those have now been converted to apartment buildings.

Nevertheless, there is still a richly gritty aspect to the market area near the train station as seen in the photo above. The station is the structure to the left. We stopped here briefly, and I got out to snap a few pictures.

New York/WTC


WTC montage — © Brian Rose

In my book, WTC, I used cropped close-ups of the facade of the Twin Towers to break up the different groupings , or chapters, of photographs. I found them intriguing as images on their own–abstract, but clearly identifiable. One of them shows a strip of blue, which is the sky between the two towers. A few months ago I began playing with close-ups in Photoshop making montages of the images, eventually settling on a sequence with the strip of sky in the center–as seen above.

I presented the montage to FAB (Fourth Arts Block), which is sponsoring a program called ArtUp. FAB  is located on E4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, a block full of theaters and other cultural organizations. Several of the groups are renovating their buildings necessitating sidewalk sheds to protect passersby. FAB is making use of these scaffolding bridges to give artists the opportunity to show their work in a public space.


Sidewalk shed on E4th Street — © Brian Rose
Earlier ArtUP piece (top photo), WTC proposal (below)

I am pleased to report that that I have been invited by FAB to mount my WTC montage on the sidewalk shed pictured above. I’ve seen several of the previous installations, and the best of them are site specific. My montage, as originally conceived, almost fits perfectly on the sidewalk shed–4×28 feet. The strip of images will be printed on vinyl or Tyvek and attached to the plywood backing of the shed. Assuming good color and sharpness, it will look something like the superimposed image above. The orange and white barricades will be removed soon reducing a lot of visual clutter. Directly across the street, FAB runs a cafe that caters to the theater going public, as well as the local neighborhood, and I will be able use a wall inside for supporting material, probably a number of photographs and text panels.

Although I have to admit that I hoped for a more prominent location for the piece somewhere downtown, I am wholly enthusiastic about doing this installation here. This is a very busy block with thousands of people walking by each day, and crowds lining up each evening to attend the theaters. Not only that, this is  the block where I lived when I first came to New York, where I worked with the Cooper Square Committee to preserve and build low income housing, and where I first met my wife who was visiting from the Netherlands. It is the block pictured on the cover of Time and Space on the Lower East Side, my book about the neighborhood. It is a very special place to me.

The installation will go up in late September when attention is focused on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I will also be doing a slide talk based on my WTC book at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the public library around the same time as the opening on 4th Street. The dates for both events will be made available soon. WTC–both the installation and book–are modest in scale compared to what will be happening down at ground zero in a few months. But I hope they will serve as a kind of antidote to the Sturm und Drang that will accompany those major public events, and offer images of the World Trade Center that evoke memory and history without a repetition of the violent imagery that inevitably will be exploited by the media.

I feel strongly that artists–and New Yorkers–have a responsibility to step up and express alternate ways of commemorating 9/11. It happened to us, to our town, to our friends and loved ones, and it profoundly altered all our lives. This piece, ultimately, is about the ubiquitous presence of the Twin Towers on the skyline–as architecture and memory–and about its absence. A patch of blue sky.