New York/Williamsburg

Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Chelsea

From the High Line — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Looking Down

From the High Line — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Williamsburg

N3rd Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Early morning in Williamsburg. Dropped off my son at school in the West Village. Last week before summer vacation. Email from Berlinsche Galerie. Polite, complimentary letter, but in short, not interested in my work. Picked up portfolio from MoMA, which is interested in my work, and met with curator. Talked about galleries and other career opportunities. Lugged portfolio case with 100 prints downtown via subway. Worked on design of Lower East Side book, which I might enter in the Blurb book contest. Honorable mention last year. Exchanged emails with education head at FOAM, the Amsterdam photography museum. She’s in New York. May meet tomorrow. No architecture client work on the horizon. Getting worried. Went home for dinner. Reading Grapes of Wrath to my son. Have seen the movie, but never read the book until now. Brilliant.

New York/Footprint

Feet on the street in New York — © Brian Rose

It’s been about five years since I discovered that my creaky knees–the result of years of playground basketball–felt better when I went without shoes–at least at home. Eventually, I came across thin soled shoes without arch support or cushioning, that were designed to allow for natural barefoot-like movement with a little protection. These were fairly conventional looking shoes unlike the foot gloves, Vibram FiveFingers, that have since become my standard gear (when not barefoot) for everything–walking, running, even lugging around my view camera equipment.

The knee pain is long gone, and I have acquired a lighter step, and much stronger, durable, feet and ankles. I’ve become so used to feeling the ground underfoot, that going back to padded shoes would be like robbing myself of a basic element of sensory perception.

So, where’s the scientific proof for all this? There are a number of recent studies that support the concept of barefoot running and walking, but, persuasive or not, I am going mostly by instinct and my own experience. For me, it’s been a game changer.

You Walk Wrong (New York Magazine)

New York/Williamsburg

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Greenwich Village

14th Street and 8th Avenue — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Coney Island

Coney Island boardwalk — © Brian Rose

It was a humid, though not particularly hot, day in Coney Island. Languid, drained of energy. Brendan rode the Cyclone with his uncle Willem visiting from the Netherlands. I declined. Took a few pictures around the roller coaster and up on the boardwalk. Had hot dogs at Nathan’s–boys with inflatable flag rifles playing. Showers moved in, and we retreated to the subway for the ride back home.

The Cyclone roller coaster — © Brian Rose

Nathan’s Hot Dog picnic tables — © Brian Rose

New York/Williamsburg

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/Williamsburg

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Not final until the acquisitions meeting in a few months, but I think I can safely report that the Museum of Modern Art is purchasing two of my prints. One from the Berlin: In From the Cold series, and one from Amsterdam On Edge.

Two very serious 4×5 pictures–unlike the orange cones and pink elephant above. But hey, can’t be serious all the time.

New York/Folk City

Folk City crowd in 1978 as seen from the stage — © Brian Rose

When I first arrived in New York in 1977 as a budding photographer and songwriter, I discovered Folk City, the club that was the center of the New York folk scene in the 60s. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave van Ronk, Phil Ochs and a host of others played the club and established its reputation. By the time I showed up looking for other songwriters and a chance to play, most of that older generation had moved on.

After playing the open mic (called the hoot) for a few weeks, and not hearing much to be inspired by, I began to wonder if the folk scene was permanently dead. One Monday at the hoot, while waiting for my number to come up, and my chance to perform two songs to a bored audience of other performers, a string of a dozen amazing songwriters went on stage and blew me away. One of them was Jack Hardy, the leader of the New York folk scene, and I recall that David Massengill and Rod MacDonald played as well. The inexplicable run of talent, I later discovered, was due to the fact that the hoot numbers were not exactly picked randomly, and once I became part of the Folk City family, I, too, benefited from the system.

The hoot numbers were distributed under the benevolent dictatorship of owner Mike Porco, who had started Folk City in 1960 at its original location on East 4th Street. Even after becoming a fixture of the Monday night hoot, Mike wasn’t sure I was ready for a gig –“you need a following”– but Jack persuaded him to let me play. So, my first gig was at Folk City, and I subsequently opened for a number of acts there, but never headlined. After Mike sold Folk City, I began to play at the Speak Easy, a falafel joint around the corner with a backroom performance space.

It’s been fifty years since Folk City was established. A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Bob Porco, Mike Porco’s grandson, about photographing an event he was organizing to celebrate the club’s anniversary. That event happened two nights ago, and the pictures that follow are random highlights from the show, a little skewed toward my generation of performers. The show took place in the basement of the last location of Folk City on West 3rd Street, a club now known as the Village Underground. Before the night was over, I was asked to play, and I took the stage and played my song Roll with the Wind (which I performed in my first gig at Folk City) accompanied by the incomparable Frank Christian and Mark Dann. I had a blast.

Check out these blogs:

http://www.folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/
http://www.beachamjournal.com/journal/
http://ronolesko.blogspot.com/

Happy Traum performing Dylan’s Buckets of Rain
— © Brian Rose

Sylvia Tyson performing her song You Were on My Mind
— © Brian Rose

David Bromberg — © Brian Rose

Suzzy and Terre Roche performing their song Face Down at Folk City
— © Brian Rose

Willie Nile — © Brian Rose

Erik Frandsen performing his song Unique New York
— © Brian Rose

Rod MacDonald performing his song Amercan Jerusalem
— © Brian Rose

David Massengill performing his song On the Road to Fairfax County
— © Brian Rose

Jack Hardy with Mark Dann performing his song Go Tell the Savior
— © Brian Rose

New York/The Bowery

The Bowery (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

Events are typically presented in photography or TV as spontaneous despite the fact that they rarely are. Most events are staged and the image makers oblige the image controllers by taking camera positions given them, and picture editors tend to use images that meet certain expectations of what events are supposed to look like, staged or unfolding spontaneously. Movie makers further create expectations of how events are experienced, how events are supposed to look, by carefully constructing experience as multi-view bursts of overlapping time, close up, stylized, and packaged.

But that is not the way events are actually experienced, at least from my perspective. Things happen or develop off camera and only briefly intersect with my consciousness–or lens. The putative event is often at a distance, fleeting, barely apprehended, elusive to the eye. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. They see what they think they see in the confusion of real time, the chaos of unfolding visual signals, unordered, unedited, unmediated. The camera is a dull witted eye.

President Obama’s motorcade drove through the Lower East Side, and swept up the Bowery. It was a passing incident noted by some, not by others. Probably unknown to him, he drove right by Shepherd Fairey working on a mural on the same spot where one of Fairey’s famous hope portraits was painted during the presidential campaign. A small crowd formed at the corner of Houston and Bowery awaiting the arrival of Obama. The police were, on the one hand, relaxed and blasé, as is typical of authority in New York. But on the other hand, a police truck was cruising up and down Houston Street clipping bicycles off of poles, tossing them arrogantly and carelessly onto a pile of dozens of other potential–pipe bombs??

I set up my view camera on the Bowery a quarter of a block from the corner in the midst of restaurant supply workers hauling stuff around on the sidewalk while some architects were discussing work for the interior of an art gallery. The motorcade approached, signaled by a few whoops of police cars, a hovering helicopter, some flashing red lights. The black cars and SUVs rounded the corner, and for a few seconds everyone turned, froze, and stared. Within seconds the event was over, the prosaic flow of work on the Bowery resumed. The most famous person in the world was a few blocks up the street, out of sight out of mind.

History witnessed.

New York/Greenwich Village

14th Street and 8th Avenue — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

New York/The Morgan Library

Everyone knows the majestic lions in front of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Far less appreciated are these female lions guarding the steps of the Morgan Library on East 36th Street. Both sets of lions were carved by Edward Clark Potter, a sculptor known especially for his life-like depictions of animals.

I was in the Morgan to see an exhibition on romantic gardens curated by Betsy Barlow Rogers, the former head of the Central Park Conservancy. I worked for Betsy early in my career making photos of the park, which were used, in part, for fundraising purposes. I also did more utilitarian photographs for park publications and events. I was offered the job as first full time photographer of Central Park, which I turned down, as tempting as it was–I wanted to remain a free lance photographer. In retrospect it may not have been the best career decision, but it’s doubtful that I would ever have begun my Iron Curtain/Berlin Wall project had I taken the job.

While at the Morgan I also saw an exhibition on the influence of Palladio on American architecture–which was serendipitous since my son is doing a school project on Colonial American architecture. And I saw drawings by Albrecht Dürer including his famed Adam and Eve.

In the main library I saw an original manuscript of Magna Carta from 1217. Here’s a bit from the library’s press release:

One of the earliest original manuscripts of Magna Carta dating to 1217 goes on exhibition Wednesday, April 21, at The Morgan Library & Museum. This extremely rare and important document came to New York for a special event for Oxford University but could not be returned to Britain because of the disruption to air traffic caused by the recent volcanic ash cloud. The Bodleian Library generously offered the Morgan the opportunity to exhibit Magna Carta while new arrangements were being made to transport it back to England. The document is on view at the Morgan through May 30.

As I have noted elsewhere, there are those who would set aside many of the principles set forth in this document, which served as the foundation for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

New York/Valley Forge

The same morning my letter appeared in the New York Times (see post below), I accompanied my son’s 5th grade class on a field trip to Valley Forge. For me, it was a day of reflection on the values we pass on to our children, and the ongoing struggle to maintain the principles this country was founded upon. The distortion of these principles by people like John Yoo, who wrote the legal memos justifying the use of torture by the Bush/Cheney administration, shame the memory of those who suffered on this field in the winter of 1777.

New York/Letter in the Times

This morning at a cafe on Hudson Street in the West Village, I read John Yoo’s New York Times op-ed piece in which he casts doubts about Elena Kagan’s qualifications for the Supreme Court because of her apparent views about “circumscribed” executive power. I was dumbfounded that Yoo would be given nearly half the op-ed page of the Times. Instead of standing trial for war crimes along with Bush and Cheney, he is rewarded with a professorship at Berkeley, and writes books and opinion pieces.

So, I pulled out my iPhone and wrote the letter above. Within two hours I heard from the Times, and was asked to approve a couple of minor edits to the original text. I still don’t think they should have printed Yoo’s article, but I give the Times credit for at least acknowledging the elephant in the middle of the room with regard to Yoo’s damaged moral and intellectual credibility.

Here is Yoo’s article. Here is the link to my letter.