NY Through the Lens - New York City Photography

New York City at night - Financial District street with a smoke stack.

At night after the multitudes have retreated to their homes away from the buildings and streets that hold them close during the day the city relaxes shaking the dust of the long day from its concrete limbs.

The street lights flicker like dream-heavy blinks of an eye while smokestacks exhale world-weary breaths of smoke into the yawning night air.

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New York City in the rain. Flatiron District, Midtown.

There is an inherent romance that buzzes through the air in New York City when it rains.

The Flatiron District is one of my favorite areas in Manhattan when it rains. The street (5th Avenue) opens up to reveal distant skyscrapers that disappear into heavy fog as people weave their way through the multitudes of umbrellas.

The clock in this image is the Fifth Avenue Building Clock (a close-up image and its history is in this post) which is a New York City landmark and recalls another era: one where these ornamental clocks played a role in attracting people to gilded era storefronts. This vantage point is with the Flatiron Building directly in back of the viewer looking up 5th Avenue.

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I have had quite a few requests that I add some of my New York City mobile photography to my online store and portfolio since people are looking to buy holiday gifts. This is the first of one of those requests. It was taken with my phone and has been lovingly added (link below!).

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Rain. New York City. Greenwich Village.

When the sky opens up over the city, urban wanderers glide over the surface of streets slick with shadowy memory.

And every drop of rain holds the world in its slippery grasp.

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Recently, someone who saw this same photo in black and white inquired if I also had the image available in color. Since I shoot in color and convert my color photos to black and white after the fact (with a few exceptions), I went through my library and found my color rendition of this scene. I was struck with how the photo evoked a different set of emotions when viewing it in color. I have come to love it in black and white to such an extent that my memory of the scene as it occurred also plays out in my mind in black and white. However, I remember the initial appeal of this candid moment was the strong bursts of color against the winter-bare trees. The day was bitterly cold: the type of damp cold that seeps down to the bone and in one short moment, the street erupted with color. It was such a fleeting moment but it created such a spark.

On a related note, I read an interesting essay by Joel Meyerwitz a few days ago on the New York Times Lens Blog called A Question of Colors - Answered. Meyerwitz is part of a current exhibition in London which compares some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s black and white images with work by other noted photographers who have been influenced by him but have chosen to work in color for a large part of their photography careers. The curator of this particular exhibition states that: “This exhibition will show how Henri Cartier-Bresson, in spite of his skeptical attitude regarding the artistic value of colour photography, nevertheless exerted a powerful influence over photographers who took up the new medium and who were determined to put a personal stamp on it. In effect, his criticisms of colour spurred on a new generation, determined to overcome the obstacles and prove him wrong.”

It’s interesting to me that color photography inhabits a more defensive realm than black and white photography especially when it comes to street photography. I think that both have different psychological effects on the viewer and both can be just as valid in terms of having artistic value. However, it’s definitely not a simple debate.

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Walking the dog towards Mill Lane. Financial District, New York City.

I have been thinking a lot about different visions of New York City a lot lately which I wrote about recently in this post about everyone’s different version of New York City in their minds. I had an interesting interview for a project I am being considered for a few weeks ago where I found myself talking about what I try to convey about New York City with my photography and writing.

It was interesting to talk about it face to face (over Skype) rather than write about it because in a sort of stream of consciousness way I had to explain to someone who had never been to New York City how I try to show how I experience New York City on a regular basis via my own views of it colored by falling in love with a combination of streetscapes in classic film noir cinema, futuristic sci-fi city environments in literature and film, and years of traversing New York City on foot.

A few nights ago, I watched a documentary about Woody Allen and there was a segment in it that resonated with me deeply which is no surprise since I am a huge fan of the Annie Hall and Manhattan era Woody Allen films. Martin Scorcese, the director of masterpieces such as: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Gangs of New York talks about Woody Allen’s extreme nostalgia for the present that is evident in Allen’s film Manhattan. He states that for Woody Allen it is as if New York City is constantly alive and continually evolving but Allen’s New York City is an entirely different planet from his own. The documentary switches over to Woody Allen who then states: “I wanted to show New York in a very beautiful way, the way I see it. I never had any interest in showing it except through my rose colored glasses; my romanticized view of it.”

There is definitely a romanticized element that is evident in my photography of New York City. When I walk from my apartment on the Lower East Side through Chinatown and Soho or up through the East Village towards midtown, I am bombarded with memories and desire to capture the fragments of life and architecture that, for me, tug at the visions of New York City I have in my own mind. I hope that one day if and when I have the means to travel I will be able to do the same which each place I explore and experience.

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Rain. Pell Street. Chinatown, New York City.

In-between light creates all its own stories. It’s the light after a long night when the city sleepily shakes off the blanket of darkness and stretches in the first few rays of the waking sun and it’s also the light after a long day when the city unwinds basking in the low light of dusk.

In-between light caught in the steady drizzle of rain is even more enchanting. Tears of laughter, heartache, sorrow and joy fall on the city streets silencing their hungry rumble. Buildings darken one by one as the city blurs softly preparing for its nightly refractory period.

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Sunny’s Bar on Conover Street. Red Hook, Brooklyn. New York City.

There are streets and places that feel as if they have been taken out another time. They seem to exist independently of the world around them as fragments of history that have somehow made it into the present.

Sunny’s is a 120 year old saloon that is located in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a neighborhood of New York City that has quite a colorful history. The bar is named after Antonio “Sunny” Balzano who was born in 1934 in the deep red brick apartment right next to the bar. Growing up near the waterfront in Red Hook in the 1940s, he would play alongside ship cargo and after surviving violent street brawls in the 1950s and the crime of the 1980s, he became the owner of the bar that neighbored the apartment where his life unfolded through the years.

The bar was originally run by Sunny’s uncle where it revolved around the shipping industry. Longshoremen were the main clientele back then. When Sunny moved back home in the 1980s to take over the operations at the bar, the neighborhood was a shell of what it used to be. The shipping industry had moved its operations across the harbor to New Jersey and for quite a few years the streets remained quiet and Sunny operated the bar just to keep it open for a few neighborhood regulars.

Red Hook has since changed as it has been embraced by both developers, the arts community and families looking to settle down in a quiet part of Brooklyn. Sunny’s still exists though, a testament to Red Hook’s colorful history.

- History pieced together from “Sunny’s Wonderful Saloon” New York Times By Wendell Jameison, October 2002

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Looking down Staple Street in Tribeca. New York City.

There are streets that I return to over and over again. These streets tug at memories I haven’t made yet while yanking memories I treasure from the deep recesses of my mind. They haunt me in all the best ways. They represent the New York City in my mind.

Everyone seems to have a different version of New York City in their mind. It’s the version that they look for when turning a corner and glancing down a street. My own version of New York City was formed early on. It’s a result of falling in love with a combination of streetscapes in classic film noir cinema, futuristic sci-fi city environments in literature and film, and years of traversing New York City on foot.

This is one of those streets that I could have only dreamed existed until I turned a corner one day and stopped dead in my tracks as I looked down the street towards the skybridge that crosses between buildings. It’s Staple Street in Tribeca. A tiny alley-like street, it contains one of the most fascinating pedestrian bridges (also known as a skyway, traverse, skywalk and a host of other terms) I have ever seen in New York City.

Some history about this street: “In 1894, New York Hospital built the House of Relief, a downtown clinic, on Jay from Hudson to Staple, with an ambulance entrance facing Staple. In that year The New York Herald noted that the hospital was sending its ambulance out as often as seven times a day, sometimes on emergencies involving sunstroke, ”which so often occurs in the lower part of the city,” perhaps because of the large number of men working outdoors on the docks.

In 1907 the hospital built an annex across Staple Street (replacing the saloon/row house at Jay and Staple) as a stable and laundry, connecting it at the third-floor level using a pedestrian bridge. Although Staple Street was then just an industrial alley, the hospital had the architects Robertson & Potter design a handsome little building with a terra cotta plaque bearing the ”NYH” monogram on the Staple Street side. The monogram is still there.” - from “Streetscapes: Staple Street in TriBeCa” New York Times By Christopher Gray, February 2001

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Doyers Street on a rainy summer afternoon. Chinatown, New York City.

When the sky seduces the city with its tears of happiness, the streets swoon illuminated by the glow of nearby lights.

Broken-hearted alleys fill up: lovers with empty recesses in their hearts soak in the warm afterglow of what the sky has wrought.

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Sunset over a cobblestone street. Tribeca, New York City.

The first whispers of summer are carried on warm breezes urged on by the sun stretching itself out from under the faintest cover of clouds.

As cobblestone streets soak up each and every last bit of golden summer sunlight the buildings glow like fiery embers in the sun’s wake.

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Looking out over the tenements of East Broadway. Two Bridges, Chinatown. New York City.

In my last post I wrote about streets that, for me, fill in the image of New York City that exists in my mind. These are streets that represent so much more than merely a geographical spot. These streets are the embodiment of a core concept that has defined New York City for many decades. The sheer density of people that grace these streets with their presence seem to imbue streets like these with the weight of their aspirations.

New York City has always been a destination for those seeking a generalized concept of a better life. As an economic lighthouse and representation of (the steadily crumbling concept of) the American Dream, New York City has attracted people from all over the world especially during the last century.

I grew up the child of an immigrant to the United States. My mother’s family fled Eastern Europe after World War II. They (including her) were victims of the war, concentration camp and labor camp survivors who carried with them mental scars so deep that it took years for them to gain even a small modicum of a foothold here.

I have always felt disconnected from her experience though. My mother who wanted her children to blend in rather than stick out as she did when she immigrated here, did her best to give me and my brothers a fairly normal American childhood where we grew up in Queens. It wasn’t until a decade ago when I started to ask her about her own immigration story after starting to delve into my own fascination with the history of New York City that I started to understand the gravity of what it means to come to a place like New York City with little more than a massive amount of dreams.

And so, shortly after moving to the Lower East Side from elsewhere in Manhattan I came across this street (the one in this photo) since it sits in a neighborhood that borders the Lower East Side and Chinatown and it felt as if I could finally understand what it must have been like for my mother and for all those who came here to America with eyes full of hope.

It’s not that my mother settled here in this neighborhood specifically. But rather that it’s as if this street has been steeped in a time when the world and New York City was a different place, one that held out vast amounts of heady fortune in its outstretched hands. The world has changed quite a bit since my mother first set foot here. It’s harder (dare I say almost completely difficult) to come here with next to nothing and make a decent life for yourself. The hands are still held out but they are no longer outstretched for everyone.

When I look at this street today, I see many of the original tenements that were standing one hundred years ago when waves of immigrants came to New York City following their own hazy image of what New York City embodied in their minds and those who traverse this street today are not so far removed from my mother who traversed the streets of New York City for many decades.

It’s as if, for the few minutes that I spend gazing at this street below (as I often do), I am connected in a deeper way to all of the dreamers that called and still call New York City their home.

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Summer on Perry Street. Greenwich Village, New York City

On summer days like this, the bright summer sun barely cuts through the branches of trees canopies that line the street while brownstones and bicycles revel in the cool shade.

Some people flee the city in the summer, preferring cooler climates free of hot cement. For me, there is nothing that comes close to summer in the city.

It’s true that often the air is held captive by the high heat and the sun scorches the pavement but when a breeze is allowed free rein to fly through the trees, something magical happens.

Streets breathe a sigh of relief and warm tones of muted sunlight cast upon buildings languishing in the shade inspire smiles of contentment.

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Above a street in the Two Bridges neighborhood. New York City.

There are areas in lower Manhattan where fragments of the city’s history have settled like fine dust, fragile and prone to the whims of time.

Around these hallowed enclaves, newer history reaches higher towards the sky and rises from the ground borne from the dust of the city’s past.

This particular spot is known as Two Bridges and sits along the East River. It borders Chinatown and the Lower East Side and has long been a dwelling spot for many different immigrant communities over the years. It sits alongside the infamous and historic Five Points area where Irish, Jewish and Italian gangs battled to the death in the mid-19th century. It is currently home to a large community of Chinese immigrants and many of the buildings are tenements dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Trees do indeed grow in Brooklyn. Cobble Hill Brownstones. New York City.

The light after a heavy rain is transcendent. Deep golden hues cling to the damp tree branches as they frame lush green leaves reeling under the weight of the rain water.

It’s all the more impressive against a backdrop of beautiful brick brownstones that can be found in neighborhoods like Cobble Hill located in Brooklyn. Cobble Hill (or Ponkiesbergh as it was first called) was originally settled during the 1640’s by Dutch farmers. The name “Cobble Hill”, according to various historical sources, came from the large amount of cobble stones being disposed in the site.

The cobble stones were used as ballast on the trading ships arriving from Europe. The high elevation point at the corner of present day Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, where the greatest amount of the cobble stones was disposed, was used as a Fort during both the American War of Independence and the War of 1812.

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Tree-lined Upper East Side street in Winter. New York City

Summer slumbers deeply. Tree limbs stripped bare remain vulnerable to the sky’s attempts to stir them from their dreaming state.

It’s when the sky caresses and seduces the earth with its snowy proclamations of love that the earth transforms into a somnambulist navigating the boundary between sleep and dreaming: dreaming its dreaming self awake slowly.

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Rainy Doyers street in Chinatown. New York City.

When the sky seduces the city with its tears of happiness, the streets swoon illuminated by the glow of nearby lights.

Broken-hearted alleys fill up: lovers with empty recesses in their hearts soak in the warm afterglow of what the sky has wrought.

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