NEW YORK RAMBLES (page 44)
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February 2020
A walk from Midtown to Chelsea
I love those storefronts, open markets where people scour bins for all sorts of color filled fresh produce and where personal interactions are an integral part of any composition. There is however danger here for the desire for action can obscure more subtle aspects. That is always a danger, becoming overly entangled with the grand. Sometimes the most ordinary things become extraordinary when my eyes are truly open.
February 2020
A Midtown ramble
Is it wrong to think of New York City as a place? Isn’t more of a machine with countless moving parts all keeping the wheels of this small universe turning? People, trees, buildings, institutions; they all come and go. Soon all will be a blur.
February 2020
A downtown ramble
While trees are still planted on streets, they are too often merely treated as a design element, a means of softening the harsh realities that sit behind them. In a city where people are no more than numbers in someone’s report, how can trees help but fade from conciseness as living things.
February 2020
A walk from the Lower East Side to the Battery and up to Soho
On some streets it is the abstract qualities of architecture and layout that cause me to lift my camera to my eye. Even design which is cold as ice can can exude great beauty. This often suits my need to balance things out. On the other hand, it is that which shows a greater input of the human hand that attracts me the most. When I stare hard enough into chaos, I find a different kind of order.
February 2020
A walk across Flushing
There are certain hours of the day, minutes really, where subtle nuances of light seem responsible for all of existence. It defines this place creating a mood so overwhelming that it is impossible to believe it is all fleeting.
February 2020
A walk in Chinatown
Parades are great symbolic gestures, expressions of communal magic or at least they should be. Considering the threat posed by the outbreak of a new virus, the street should be packed with extraordinary crowds seeking the Provence of luck that flows from the dance of new year dragons. Instead many have apparently shuttered themselves in as if that will save them from their fate. What happens when the most precious things we have so long believed in are reduced to mere amusements.
February 2020
A walk from Tribeca to Soho
Despite the great influx of glass and steel, much of New York remains gritty; at least enough for me to still find something to shoot. Many say good riddance to the things I love, but it’s not a matter of nostalgia for things that were never truly good that I long for. We are loosing the human touch. Character after all is an unpredictable messy affair that defies control. Sterile is preferable to those who see people as nothing more than interchangeable automatons.
January 2020
A walk in Kissena Hollow
Yes, I know, ducks, a lake, reflections of lamps in water by night; how cliché can I get. Sometimes I just have to look past the pretty in a picture. Too tired, too cold to move, we settled into each others company, snow gently falling.
January 2020
A loop between Flushing and Hillcrest
Life in the projects means being surrounded by green space, but is this merely a token to provide an illusion of the good life and freedom. Walk out any door and a world of fences and signs will direct every move. The landscape leaves no doubt who is in control here. It is just as stoic as the expressionless faces of the high-rises. When fog arrives, the possibility of dreams roll in with it. One can imagine that none of this is real.
January 2020
A ramble in Kissena Hollow
SThere are trees in a forest that stand out the same way that certain people do in a crowd. There is a certain grace about them, an elegance to their movements. I find that I cannot avert my eyes whenever such an encounter takes place. There is a strange magnetism I can’t resist. Over time a portfolio grows as if entering snapshots into a family album.
December 2019
A walk in Midtown
Sometimes, wandering the streets of New York, I can’t help but become a modernist.
December 2019
A walk from the Upper East Side to Hudson Yards
More than fake news, I’m afraid of those who profess to know the absolute truth and tell me with certainty what is real. I always find that the deeper I look into things, the more elusive truth becomes. What will we do when we become a city made entirely of reflections, one that turns everything we believe we know into an indecipherable knot? Will we understand anything at all?
December 2019
A Central Park ramble
I have always loved the large boulders and rock formations of Central Park that have only a few steps carved into them. These are not part of carefully laid paths. They do not lead to anywhere in particular. They just seem to point the way to someplace that is more dream than real.
November 2019
A ramble in Kissena Hollow
Do not let anyone feed you stories about water freezing into ice crystals; snow is a far more remarkable substance. Today it has turned the air a precious silver. I feel rich just to breath it in. It has also awakened trees I thought long lost to deep dreams. They seem startled to be sired out of sleep. I’m afraid to approach, fearful they will reach out for me.
October 2019
A walk by night through Flushing
It can be said that we light up our streets at night from fear of what lurks in the shadows. While there is certainly a primordial fear of being eaten by creatures better adapted to darkness than we are, there seems to be something else, something deeper that plagues us at night. Our attempts to brighten prove faulty for they can only be measured in lumens. What we carve out of the night is what we carve out of our souls, places we do not always wish to go.
October 2019
A walk in Flushing
It seems that there was once a time when vivid color was so rare that it was the province of kings. Today we are bombarded with more color than we can bare, each screaming for attention. Cheapened by excess, refined taste has shifted toward the appreciation of natural grays and browns formally reserved for peasants. I let my eye decide as trends flip and flop. Gaudy or not, I cannot deny the power of color.
October 2019
A walk in Midtown at night
New York is not lacking in darkened streets but some are so lit at night that I barely recognize them from their daylight incarnations. Light has become the latest tool in sculpting.
September 2019
A ramble through Bay Ridge and Sunset Park
I’ve never got caught up in the rivalry between Brooklyn and Queens; I see us as friendly cousins. In fact, I thought the Queens aesthetic could easily be applied to my rambles through Brooklyn and was vert surprised to find it does not fit. Sure, there are similarities even when accounting for the vast differences between particular neighborhoods, but there seems to be an invisible boundary as difficult to define as a line on a map. I suspect the culprit resides in the layers of human experience. They are more dense in Brooklyn, which adds more weight to the land.
September 2019
A walk from the Village to Union Square
A pilgrimage by its very nature is not easy. Some even make this journey more arduous on purpose to prove their devotion to the task. This basic idea cannot be separated from Pope.L’s communal art crawl across the Village and thatÕs the problem. The very act of crawling through the city streets is such a powerful metaphor that it overwhelms all the confusing symbolism that the artist imposed on the crawlers. And yet this strength at the very heart of this performance was diluted by the large number of well-meaning volunteers who kept the blindfolded crawlers on course, swept the streets in front of them, and provided kneepads and water. While I did not really want to see bloodied, dehydrated crawlers arrive at Union Square, that at least would have been honest.
September 2019
A ramble in Little Italy
Street fairs tend to be chaotic and crowded. IÕm forced to work in close quarters, which I hate, and someone always seems to walk in front of me just as a good composition lines up. Yet it is this very swirling commotion that adds new life to the street and the possibility of finding that very oddly balanced shot.
September 2019
A walk from Union Square to the Lower East Side
There are two parts to parades, street fairs and carnivals; there are the festivities where crowds take part in entertainment, fast food and cheap thrills, and then there are all the mechanics that make it possible. I have to say IÕm attracted to both though I find illusion taking a break amidst real life especially alluring.
September 2019
A ramble in Corona and Elmhurst
There are certain neighborhoods where interesting texture almost seems to grow naturally from the earth. Fertile soil doesn’t always follow wealth and taste.
September 2019
A ramble in College Point
A view of the distant city skyline used to inspire. Behind its mighty walls lay interesting foods, good jobs, entertainment and a whole range of possibilities. If not a promise of a new and better life it was at least a temporary remedy for boredom. Now with new urban hubs popping up all over the boroughs like a pox, a growing skyline can inspire fear. One never knows when they will be exiled from their garden.
September 2019
A ramble around Elmhurst
Not all community gardens get enough light to transform them into a green paradise but they can still be a playful oasis.
September 2019
A ramble in Elmhurst
And I thought air rights were only for skyscrapers.
September 2019
A walk from Corona to Woodside
In my dream, I had just come up from a basement and upon seeing an open door I stepped out into the street. Everything was quite ordinary, average cars, average houses, trees of little distinction. I could feel the warmth of sun on my skin, the cool air of the breeze in my lungs. The light filling the scene was not special in any way but it sparkled as it is apt to do on a fine summer morning. Though hardly beautiful, it was all very serene. The sense of comfort that washed over me made me glad to be alive. Sometimes you just have to step out into the light.
July 2019
A walk from the Village to Hudson Yards
Most shots I take are instantaneous, my finger is already off the shutter release before I know what I’ve captured. Then there are those strange moments when I seem to be walking into a shot, when everything around me is gelling into a particular point in time as if that’s my destination. I suppose it is.
August 2019
A walk in Flushing
There is no such thing as clean lines in modern architecture apart from the carefully prepared models that sit in polished offices. Once anything begins to rise, people find a way to clutter things up.
August 2019
A ramble through Corona
The City is crisscrossed by numerous highways and rail lines that seem to have been laid without any regard to the communities they run through. These moats and castle walls do not protect, they divide and even weaken. We care more about getting people to and fro these days than in their destinations.
August 2019
A walk from Union Square to Hudson Yards
Sometimes I feel like a pinball being hurled back and forth and sideways down streets in pursuit of that elusive high score.
