The opening and performance at the gallery in Williamsburg went well. Scroll down for more information about the show and gallery hours. A decent crowd considering it was the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. I performed a batch of my songs after the reception, the first time I’ve played in public in several years. I did around eight songs, some early ones from the late ’70s, and a few from recent years. I was happy to see Cervin Robinson, the architectural photographer, as well as music friends Greg Anderson and Jim Allen.

Under the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo, Brooklyn

A few additional comments from the New York Photo Festival. I think the most provocative work in the show was by Danish photographer Jacob Holdt, a sort of outsider artist, whose work has generally escaped notice in the art world. A couple of years ago his photographs made in the early 1970s while traveling around the US were published by Steidl. But his work has not been seen much on this side of the pond.

Photo by Jacob Holdt

Hitchhiking around the country, Holdt hung out with and lived with people of all walks of life, but particularly the down and out. His photographs show the squalor of urban and rural life in the ’70s, violence, guns, racism. He even befriended member of the KKK, and photographed cross burnings. Holdt presents his work as political activism, and in fact, he has given lectures and slide shows for years since making the photographs. At the festival his slides were shown on several old-fashioned carousel projectors, their fans whirring, the slides click clacking into place.

Photo by Jacob Holdt

There is zero art gloss to his photographic method–the images are crudely powerful. Disturbing. And although I think the attention he is now getting is legitimate, I am somewhat suspicious of the high culture assimilation of his work. By all means spend some time on his website. Where does work like this fit into the history of photography and social documentation?

Photo by Jacob Holdt

William Ewing, one of the curators of the festival, argues that the photo history canon of the past few decades needs to be shaken up. That older photographers like Holdt have been overlooked, and that younger photographers from all corners of the globe aren’t getting the attention they deserve. I am sympathetic to his curatorial quest, but remain uncertain where to place someone as strange and insistently didactic as Jocob Holdt. Perhaps, he is best left outside the canon. Someone to be dealt with on his own terms.

Dumbo, Brooklyn

This evening is the opening of my exhibition, Journal, based on this blog. I spent most of yesterday hanging the prints–54 11x14s and one 40×50. The space, which is a storefront gallery, is beautiful, has good lighting, and looks especially nice after dark from the street. After the reception, at 8pm, I will be performing songs, old and new.

The gallery is in Williamsburg and is easy to reach from the L train Bedford Avenue station.

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Sleeping Soldiers by Tim Hetherington — © Brian Rose

One of the strongest pieces in the show curated by Jon Levy was a three panel video installation by Tim Hetherington showing sleeping soldiers juxtaposed against a tense and emotional exchange on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Unlike so many video pieces that seem designed primarily to test one’s patience, this montage of images, still and moving, gets to the point powerfully in a relative handful of minutes.

Carlos Ranc in St. Ann’s Warehouse — © BrianRose

I had limited time to see the festival, so I moved quickly through curator Jody Quon’s exhibit, which deals with female identity. The other major exhibit of the festival, which I did not see, also dealt with sexual identity, gay males. These are very familiar contemporary art themes, the kind of thing I seem hardwired to resist. But, of course, dismissing whole exhibits may not be fair to individual artists, so I try to wade through anyway. Although I don’t go for Carlos Ranc’s blurry manipulations of Playboy models, I do like Katy Grannan’s carefully posed work very much. I’ll have to write about her some time in the future.

Robert Walker and William Ewing — © Brian Rose

Within five minutes of arriving at the New York Photo Festival I ran into Bill Ewing, one of the curators, walking down the street. I know Bill from a long time ago when he was the curator at ICP. He was the first person to show my Iron Curtain/BerlinWall photographs. A short time later I ran into Bob Walker, a Canadian photographer who for years has been densely compressed, layered, street photographs.

Robert Walker photographs — © Brian Rose

Recently, however, he has been photographing flowers and plants with the same tightly packed energy. The color hovers between naturalistic and hyper real. They are beautiful images, but without the softness or sentimentality so often associated with the subject.

Dumbo, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

The New York Photo Festival was held for the second year last weekend in Dumbo, the atmospheric neighborhood under the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges in Brooklyn. My visit was fairly short because of a busy personal schedule, but I managed to see two of the main exhibits, and ran into several old friends and met a some interesting people. More on that later.

Walking around between the venues, it seemed that there were several photo festivals taking place simultaneously. One of them inside the galleries, and the other out in the street where dozens of camera wielding, badge wearing, visitors were taking pictures of Dumbo–and each other. I was one of these.

Another smaller group of photographers were paying no attention to us, or to the exhibits. They were photographing formally dressed brides and grooms on the gritty cobblestoned streets with the bridge towers and spans soaring overhead. Incongruous as it was–tuxedos, gowns and limos interspersed with the usual raffish New York photo crowd–it lent a surreal theatricality to the scene.

Dumbo, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Dumbo, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

The New Museum — © Brian Rose

I’ve been busy putting together my show that opens in Williamsburg, Brooklyn next Friday, the 22nd. Scroll down for the announcement. The exhibit will–most likely–consist of 54 11×14 panels, each presenting an entry from my blog, running chronologically. These will be push pinned to the wall in two or three rows on the walls of the gallery. There will be text accompanying the photographs, as in the blog, but edited down to work better in an exhibit.

I am also including one image from my Lower East Side project printed 40×50 inches. This print I made at Beth Schiffer Labs, which has rental work stations and printers. It is a digital C print. The smaller prints were made using Adorama’s digital printing service. Basically, you upload your files, and pick up the prints. Working this way goes quite smoothly if you have good digital files and use the color profile provided on their website.

I have been practicing the songs I plan to sing at the opening. I’m prepared to do about a dozen, some old, some quite new. I can’t remember when I last did a full-fledged gig, but I am looking forward to this very much. Apparently, I can still play the guitar and sing! There will be an emphasis on songs about or taking place in New York and the urban landscape in general. A few of them relate to recent events–one about 9-11.

Tomorrow I hope to get to the New York Photo Festival, and will report back.

Apple Store, Soho

Finally succumbed to desire–and T-Mobile contract finally outlived–cashed in some American Express points for his and her iPhones.

Life is now complete.

Prince Street — © Brian Rose

Without comment.

Second Avenue and Houston Street — © Brian Rose

There are not many places in New York where you look directly up or down one of the avenues–without standing in the street, of course. When the Whole Foods mega supermarket opened a couple of years ago at the foot of Second Avenue, it was a game changing event for the neighborhood. I leave it to you to decide whether it was a boon or the utter fall of civilization on the Lower East Side.

Whatever the case, the view up Second Avenue from the tables on the second floor is great, especially at dusk.

Tenth Avenue — © Brian Rose

The past few Sunday mornings I’ve been taking my son Brendan to Little League baseball practice at park near the Hudson River in Chelsea. Today was a washout, but on previous days I’ve wandered around the Chelsea gallery district–utterly devoid of people.

Tenth Avenue and W21st Street — © Brian Rose

Under the High Line, W21st Street — © Brian Rose

The High Line passes through this area, an infrastructural relic being converted to an elevated park promenade.

W22nd Street — © Brian Rose

W22nd Street — © Brian Rose

W21st Street — © Brian Rose

W21st Street — © Brian Rose

W22nd Street — © Brian Rose

More more more. Where’s my bailout?

“Freedom Ain’t Free” — © Brian Rose

Despite the sea change at the top with Obama being elected in November, there remains at all levels of government an unhealthy–and often unconstitutional–disregard for civil liberties and the people’s right to know. Exhibit “a” being the recent fly-over incident in New York when one of the two Air Force One 747s accompanied by fighter jets buzzed lower Manhattan for a photo-op.

The problem wasn’t the fly-over itself–though wasteful and unnecessary in the extreme–but the decision of the federal government to withhold information about the maneuver from the public. No one, apparently, in a responsible position federally or locally considered that a large plane flying at low altitude over Ground Zero just might rattle a few nerves. Or set off widespread panic. For government promo photographs.

Meanwhile, this morning, the lede in an article in the Times:

A growing number of big-city police departments and other law enforcement agencies across the country are embracing a new system to report suspicious activities that officials say could uncover terrorism plots but that civil liberties groups contend might violate individual rights.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

The article goes on to describe how photographers–even art students and their professors–have been harrased by the police for having the audacity to photograph things like power lines and other components of public infrastructure. The article includes the box above, which lists a few of what the LAPD considers potentially suspicious activities.

Two of the activities relate to photography: Engaging in suspected pre-operational surveillance and taking pictures or video footage with no apparent esthetic value. Using odd camera angles, photographing security equipment, security personnel, traffic lights or building entrances.

The Williamsburg Bridge (potentially suspicious activity)
© Brian Rose

As a photographer engaged in a seemingly random search for visual significance in the built environment I can think of no better description for what I do than “pre-operational surveillance… with no apparent esthetic value.” Guilty as charged.

E7th Street/McSorley’s — © Brian Rose (4×5 film)

Here is the view camera version of the image of McSorley’s Ale House posted earlier. Line of out-of-towners waiting to get in, a limo idling, Cooper Union construction crane, and CU’s Foundation Building itself beyond. The greenish tower is the Gwathmey Siegel condominium on Astor Place.

E2nd and Second Avenue — © Brian Rose (4×5 film)

A photo from February that I just got around to scanning. Part of my ongoing Lower East Side project. Taken in the snow, late in the day. Pretty sharp negative considering the weather.

The Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, New Jersey — © Brian Rose

What I’ve been working on recently.

Red Bank, New Jersey — © Brian Rose

I did a photoshoot in Red Bank yesterday, a beautiful old theater recently restored by FMG of Princeton. Red Bank is a lovely small city, but I’m afraid my visual non sequiturs taken on the fly don’t do it justice.

New York — © Brian Rose

Another non sequitur back in New York.

Red Bank, New Jersey — © Brian Rose

I’m photographing a historic theater in Red Bank, New Jersey later this week. These pictures are from my scouting trip down there.

Red Bank, New Jersey — © Brian Rose

© Brian Rose

Without comment.