I just got back from a whirlwind two and a half days in New York City. I was flown out to be interviewed by Yahoo for The Flickr Blog, which ought to be up in the next week or two. I then tacked on an extra two nights to see and experience the Big Apple for the first time.
It was intense. That city defies description. It's size boggles the mind. The city stretches east, west, north, south, up and down. Way way up. I spent nearly every waking moment of those days exploring every nook my feet could carry me to, and when they were insufficient I hopped subways. My body hated me when I was done, well my feet did anyway, but I loved every step of it.
Photographing New York was a challenge though. Not an unexpected one mind you. It is easy to go into that city and make pictures. There are beautiful bridges and amazing views. Just go up to the top of the Rockefeller Center and nestle into the crowd up there and make (the same as everyone else) pictures of the city spread below you. Or stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge. Or Central Park. And that list goes on and on. But if you had been there with me, knew my history as a photographer in terms of how prolifically I work, you may have been surprised just how little I used my camera in that first day. I won't say I was overwhelmed but I will say that I was at an initial loss for words while processing all that I was seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling. And until some sort of modest conclusions started to form, I didn't make many images... at first.
I met up with a friend while there (a few of them actually). Sean met me at the base of the Rockefeller Center one evening as I was coming down from the top. We hopped a subway to Chinatown to stroll its grungier, better preserved streets. He has lived there a bit over a year now and generously offered to guide me around for a night. So we strolled through Chinatown, Little Italy, part of SoHo and Tribeca. He made more photos than I did. I snapped a couple on my digital and none with my Hasselblad all that night. It was only my second night in New York after all. The lack of photos hadn't particularly bothered me. I am at a point where I have so many pictures I am content to let cameras hang on hips and enjoy with my eyes and imagination. Mind you, I love making images of what I experience but I am not so obsessed as to force the issue. But the words for why this was finally occurred to me that evening over the course of three hours of good conversation with Sean. I told him I hadn't figured out what it was I wanted to say about New York. I was still getting even a basic feel for the city and didn't know how to add to the overall conversation of what is New York. I didn't want to just grab the same old photos that every tourist does when confronted with Manhattan. I did get many of those photos mind you, but if possible I wanted to actually say something more thoughtful about what the city is like. And that is tricky. New York City is so vast. It is so many things and none of those things individually. New York City is people and towering skyscrapers and food and horns honking and driven purpose and bright nights and chill breezes off the East River and pushing and shoving and concrete and steel and garbage and so much more.
Those first 24 hours in the city I was still sifting through this impossible task of figuring it all out. I don't claim I figured it all out ultimately, not in the brief time I was there. But I will say, the day after that night out with Sean, I met up with another Flickr photographer, Owen Luther (some of you who know me probably know him as well, the guy is pretty handy with a Hasselblad) and we went for a marathon 14 hour stroll around the lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. And in the middle of that, the photos started happening. An understanding of sorts finally started to take shape and with it the images because I started to get a feel for what I wanted to contribute to the photographic conversation of what this city is.
My thanks to all those I met in New York that took the time to spend some with me: Sean, Reema, Rory, and Owen, as well as the complete strangers I met that offered some interesting conversations. I thank you.
Tags: New York New York City top of the Rock Rockefeller Center Manhattan crowds Empire State Building b&w Canon 5D Mark II Nikkor 50mm 1.4
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I struggled initially with the idea of New York City. I didn't struggle with the city mind you, after a couple of hours I felt like I fit right in. I do that with cities. I have spent enough time in big ones that I am at ease navigating their streets, their subways, their narrow alleys. But I struggled with the idea of New York City, even if I didn't with the city itself. And it was this moment right here which was a watershed for me. I had spent most of the day walking the city with fellow photographer Owen Luther, we had arrived at Grand Central station and had hung out in there for almost an hour making some long exposure. I had had a conversation with another photographer I met on the spot from Czech Republic. I was sort of in a passive photography mode still... or at least even more passive than usual. I made the requisite long exposures in Grand Central because... well, you are there, you have a camera, it is Grand Central Station, you have to. But then we stepped outside, up to a curb, ready to cross the street and head in search of other corners of the city. And I stopped and stood there a moment. The street in front of me had caught my eye with its dual walls of towering skyscrapers on either side cutting the open sky down to a narrow slice above the street. I pause, flipped open my Hasselblad and looked a moment and then closed it back up without making a photo. I almost moved on but some other intuition caught me then and I crouched down between two of the cars in the wall of automobiles parked in front of us. And the intruding bumpers presented themselves, along with those towering buildings, in such a way that really started to feel like how New York City felt to me. I waited a moment and a fellow crossed the street in front of me and I fired my Hasselblad. It all only took about ten seconds perhaps, but it was a big ten seconds for me. It was the puzzle pieces finally coming into place.
For that moment at least, this was so much about what New York meant to me.
Tags: NYC New York City Hasselblad Hasselblad 500C Kodak Tri-X B&W film analog 6x6 square Manhattan street dense New York cityscape
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For those who have spent time with Hasselblads in their hands, you'll recognize the genuflection here: that quiet moment bent over camera, sorting the world out on the focusing screen.
I spent 14 hours one day walking around New York with Owen Luther. We discovered this passageway beneath the surface of the city near the Freedom Tower. We both paused a number of moments with our cameras and collected our thoughts on the place.
Tags: NYC New York Hasselblad white Tri-X Hasselblad 500C New York City underground Kodak Tri-X film analog 6x6 120
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It amazes me that people built this, all of it. So incredible.
Tags: Top of the Rock Rockefeller Center New York City New York Hasselblad film square analog 6x6 Medium Format 120 city cityscape urban Manhattan sunset quite the view Hasselblad 500C Big Apple Kodak Portra 400
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My interview with Yahoo regarding my pinhole photography looks like it will be going up on Friday. So in light of that schedule, a week's worth of pinhole images is in order.
And the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, made the day after that interview took place, is as good a place to start as any. When I learned I would be visiting New York for the first time I set very few expectations for the trip in terms of photography. But this bridge was one of my "must see" items. I know, everybody and their mother has been up here with cameras making images of these cables. But there is a good reason for that. Walking across this bridge is quite the experience. It is a grand and marvelous structure. The interesting thing to note is that while most of the photography concentrates on the webwork of suspension cables, the detail I was most struck by was the massive stone towers from which the cables suspend. Those towers look like something the Romans built 2000 years ago and then left behind, to be found by later civilizations and converted into a bridge. They are immense and immovable and so permanent looking. I don't think I ever found a photo that quite did them justice, but I did find a number within the spiderweb of cables that I enjoyed making. And of course, at least one of them was pinhole.
Tags: pinhole film analog Zero Image Zero 2000 Brooklyn Bridge New York City New York square 6x6 color negative Kodak Ektar 100
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