Yearly Archives: 2017
157. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Staten Island. An outer borough that looks anything but outer borough.
156. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The moniker “outer borough” is commonly used in New York, referring to the four boroughs that are not Manhattan. Having cut my teeth in Brooklyn, I will never see New York as Manhattan Only. This photo shows two common features of the outer boroughs: the elevated subway tracks and the low rise dwellings (both of which you will find in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn–but not Staten Island, which is another world again).
155. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Astoria, Queens. The NYC subway is an endless source of interest.
154. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year…” Okay, so Edgar Allen Poe lived in the Bronx not Brooklyn. This reminds me of the Ashcan School, an American movement of painters whose subdued palette reflects the industrial Northeast: “Some members of this new generation were interested in creating a new type of art that reflected life in the growing cities across America. In sharp contrast to the conventional and rather genteel American Impressionism that represented the most popular American art of the period, these American Realists set about capturing the spontaneous moments of urban life.” Take a look at them, they capture the light and mood perfectly.
153. PASSAGES. Singapore. A city state with a look all its own. The gloom was a result of something called the “2015 Southeast Asian Haze”. From Wikipedia: The 2015 Southeast Asian haze was an air pollution crisis affecting several countries in Southeast Asia. It was the latest occurrence of the Southeast Asian haze, a long-term issue that occurs during every dry season in the region. It is caused by forest fires resulting from illegal slash-and-burn practices, principally on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan.
152. NEW YORK ON FOOT. The Bronx. Niether digital nor analog could save the tonal range of this photo because it wasn’t there in the first place, but when raw horsepower is needed analog leaves fewer contaminants behind. The relatively empty spaces and open sky of the Bronx can leave one feeling wistful on a lazy summer evening.
151. PASSAGES. Charlotte, North Carolina. I doubt a picture says a thousand words, but a picture certainly can cause a thousand words. I read an article recently where the author argued that on the scale of safety versus liberty, the USA leans heavily toward liberty. In 1776 this country decided to step out of the mainstream of Occidental civilization and go it alone. As an immigrant from a British colony, I am only beginning to understand the place, but my affection for it grows despite the overheated rhetoric that images like the above provoke. “This country is hard on people” is a line from No Country for Old Men, another uncomfortable snapshot of America.
150. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Turtle Bay, Manhattan. It seems that every 19th Century European painter took a shot at the “Paris street, rain at dusk” picture. There is something archetypal about turning up one’s collar against the rain while looking in envy at warm interiors, and the orange glow of tungsten light is the perfect foil for the cold blue of a rainy winter sky. Its a scene that I never tire of. The blur caused by camera shake and a bad lens makes the image more painterly.
149. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Taken at the northern tip of Brooklyn, looking across Newtown Creek into Queens. The image has that unique sunlight effect of some coastal cities–I have seen it in New York, Vancouver, Galway, Los Angeles and various places around the Mediterranean, but never in the tropics. Maybe its a Northern Hemisphere thing.
148. PASSAGES. Valley Stream, Long Island. Taken six weeks after Hurricane Sandy 25 miles from Manhattan. This quiet suburban street didn’t make the news because it was nothing compared to what happened in Gerritsen Beach or Breezy Point. New York is difficult enough without superstorms.
147. PASSAGES. Montreal. I have long believed that islands make the most interesting cultures. Something about isolation, and without the ability to sprawl island cultures tend to concentrate rather than dissipate. An analogy is Peter O’toole telling Charlie Rose that it is better to deepen rather than broaden for an actor to achieve more powerful effects. Quebec is an island of eight million Francophones in Anglo North America. It is both Europe and North America, yet something else completely. In the art of living it is certainly a step above.
146. PASSAGES. The Berkshires, Massachusetts. This wooded, mountainous region is revered by Northeasterners. Even the names around here have a Northeastern sound: the Taconic Mountains, the “marble valleys of the Hoosic River”, the Hudson Highlands, and all of it bordered by “Metacomet Ridge geology”. The Berkshire mountain ranges were formed 500 million years ago when Africa collided with North America. Imagine that.
145. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Central Park. 843 acres of parkland in the midst of some of the most condensed, populated, competitive, expensive real estate on the planet? The fact that Central Park even exists is hard to believe. Forget the Statue of Liberty, Central Park is my vote as the symbol of the American Dream. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” –Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural.