I jump on the F train and take it to the edge of Brooklyn– passed Avenue X, passed Neptune Avenue– all the way to Coney Island and Stillwell Avenue where salt water seeps into and intoxicates my pores. 23rd street and Surf Avenue is a barren block with only two four story high tenements, a garage, and gated off areas of visceral and forgotten earth stretching between everything and leading to the boardwalk. The mermaids and the captains, the pirates, the seamen, the dancers, the prancers, the drinkers, the artists, the nudes, the locals and the foreigners all descend upon Coney Island for The Mermaid Parade, a day long celebration of the summer. On 23rd and Surf, they prepare themselves. They paint their bodies, they make their costumes, they drink, they dance and look at each other, they mingle and get ready, smoke, kiss, laugh. The parade pre party builds up and crescendos with marching bands and carnival barkers until the roar of the parade falls forward into motion and begins. I follow. Camera in hand. >>Coney Island Mermaid Parade, 2016
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The Chen wedding was on City Island in the Bronx. A life long New Yorker and still there are places I am going for the first time. I jumped into my car in Brooklyn and drove down Eastern Parkway to the Jackie Robinson Expressway where I sped through zigs and zags emerging onto the White Stone Bridge and then finally, an hour and a half later, City Island. I arrived early. Met the bride and groom, walked around the space, unloaded my gear, set up and started to photograph. There are so many cultural components to being a wedding photographer that one has to be sensitive to. I love photographing action and events and making visual narratives out of candid moments. Most of the people at the wedding, especially the elderly, were from Taiwan. As soon as I would point my camera at a group of people they would freeze up, stiffen out, pause their candid moment, look at the camera sternly, a kind of pose, and then continue. It made my job difficult. I just photographed more. Then I started to feel like people were turning their backs on me. I spoke with people, asked people to pose, directed […]
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On the weekends in NYC, the subways break. They just stop working and reroute into a surreal world where nothing means what it says. The F train turns into the A train which turns into the D train which stops on the local tracks– but only for a few stops then it becomes an express 3 train to 59th street, but going downtown is a whole other story. The L train is at a halt in both directions because someone jumped to their death in front of a train in Brooklyn. There was an “incident” on the Q train which has stopped all Q services. Someone pulled the emergency alarm on the 1 train which is now stuck waiting for the police before it can resume service. The C train has track work on the uptown side so is rerouted over the E line. Everything becomes hopelessly chaotic and straphangers search for the most abstract transfers to get home while tourists open wide their subway maps punctuating and pointing in confusion while scratching their heads. Parents pull children up and down stairs, some lug carriages and elderly people clutch to the hand rails moving slowly. If only I could get […]
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At the tail end of 2015 I was second photographer at an Orthodox Jewish Wedding. I followed the Kallah (bride) documenting and photographing the female side of the wedding. The horah dance was particularly interesting to shoot. It’s a bit like a mosh pit– which I’ve been in many of, and, so, had no problem maneuvering through. Being a photographer is like being an anthropologist and I love that. I get access, insight and connections with cultures which are otherwise foreign to me. >> Newman Wedding
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This month I’ve finished updating my website, will be directing and photographing a chess tournament in NYC and will be photographing an Orthodox Jewish wedding in upstate New York. Things are percolating.
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