31-JUL-2011
Primary colors, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Yellow and blue are primary colors. This yellow truck was parked along Brooklyn’s Third Avenue. I knew that if waited, I would be able to find a blue background as traffic flowed past it. It was only a matter of a minute or two until a bus bearing a blue advertisement passed the truck. Amazingly, the ad also featured trapeze artists that caught just as they flew over the window of the parked truck. The result is a strikingly incongruous image, featuring contrasting primary colors and an improbable subject relationship.
02-AUG-2011
Convergence, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
New York’s buildings often speak with their walls, as well as with their architecture. In this image, two eras collide on at a Brooklyn intersection. A contemporary public art mural salutes a community jobs project on one corner, while an early 20th century tile company proclaims its wares on the other. The colors seem complimentary, and somehow bridge the huge gap in time.
02-AUG-2011
Anonymous, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
I’ve layered this image in vestiges of urban life. The lean of a safety pylon draws the eye to the pair of pedestrians crossing paths before a shuttered shop. The pair of painted street markings in the foreground echo the pace of the people passing each other just above them. The geometric shadow on the corrugated shutter embraces the pedestrians as well. They see neither the festive primary colors that hang above them, nor each other. The image expresses the pervasive sense of anonymity that characterizes this vast city.
02-AUG-2011
The court, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The extravagant graffiti on a brick wall overwhelms the faded and degraded basketball backboard that rises above it. The inhabitants of this neighborhood have left their mark on both, creating a contrasting definition of urban life on the streets of Brooklyn.
01-AUG-2011
Urban oasis, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
A local coffee and ice cream shop provides a gathering place for this group of friends. My wideangle focal length stresses the advertisement on the wall at right, featuring a cup of juice that links the eye to the pair of circular cups on the window in the background. The cool surroundings offer a pleasant summer retreat from the streets of a steaming city.
31-JUL-2011
Doorways, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The doorways of the industrial neighborhoods of South Brooklyn reflect the coarse texture of this part of New York City. Graffiti has claimed the door at left, and it has not been removed. The artist who embellished the door at right apparently once intended a nod to his ethnicity, yet the partially veiled Muslim figure now seems to be slowly crumbling into the material of the door itself. Defiant graffiti scrawled below a no parking sign has claimed ownership of this door as well.
31-JUL-2011
The Gardens of Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. Most consider South Brooklyn’s infamous Gowanus Canal to be an eyesore, a polluted blight. Once the nation’s busiest commercial canal, it has now fallen on hard times. It is toxic, and often smells of sewage. Its depths conceal mercury, lead, coal tar, and other contaminants. Urban legends call it a Mafia dumping ground – one novelist noted that it is “the only body of water in the world that is 90 per cent guns.” Yet there can be a haunted beauty to the place – the graffiti that marks its banks verges on the spectacular, and the ivy climbing its chain link fencing makes us see a garden amidst the decay. And that is what I envisioned when I made this image.
31-JUL-2011
Lonely landmark, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The 1873 headquarters of the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company was the earliest known concrete building in New York City. Once regarded as one of the most elegant structures in Brooklyn, the building was virtually forgotten during the 20th century. In 2006, it was designated a New York City landmark. Today it stands as a lonely sentinel on the corner of a vast empty lot, slated to become part of Brooklyn’s first Whole Foods shopping complex. I found graffiti covering its base, the elegant entrance boarded up and incongruously decorated, and its staircase crumbling. Whole Foods claims its new store will jog around the old landmark, and the company will eventually repair its roof and exterior. Meanwhile, its erosion continues.
02-AUG-2011
Crossing, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The upper part of massive mural known as “Great Walls: Justice Everywhere,” symbolizes cultural opportunities for the residents of this inner city South Brooklyn neighborhood. The mural, created by New York City’ Groundswell Community Mural Projects, is colorful even in the deep shade, and draws scale and strength from the traffic lights that I layer before it in my image. The lights are a metaphor for a crossing, a place of decision. The mural illuminates the opportunities that await such decisions.
01-AUG-2011
Brownstone, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The texture of the peeling paint in this image of a vintage Brooklyn brownstone offers viewers a tactile insight into the passage of time itself. The low angle of the early morning light intensifies that texture, and warms the rich color which envelopes half the image. By contrasting the warmth of one side of this building with the chilly, deeply shadowed half, we can ponder the unknown side of this structure, and wonder about the inhabitants this building may have known over the years.
31-JUL-2011
Public art at the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
The decaying neighborhood around South Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is slowly being reclaimed. Only a few yards from the Canal’s landmark 1889 Carroll Street Bridge, one of just four retractable bridges left in the United States, a massive concrete wall has been fashioned into a work of public art, stressing the importance of literacy. The artwork has been either enhanced or defaced by an overlay of colorful graffiti, depending upon the viewer’s point of view. I layer the image with a screen of heavy weeds, symbolizing the extent of the work that lies ahead for the area’s residents.
02-AUG-2011
Doing business, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, 2011
Surrounded by supplies, equipment, memorabilia, and menus, a café proprietor tracks his business minute by minute. In case any of his customers might wonder where they are, the neon sign on the wall will let them know. Above it is a framed photograph of Ebbets Field, former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Below the Brooklyn sign is a framed poster featuring Ruth Orkin’s 1951 iconic street photograph “American Girl in Italy,”
Meanwhile the proprietor pays no heed to any of it – he seems totally absorbed in his task.