Just heard that the photographer Paul Fusco passed away. Back in 2008, I posted the following essay about his photographs made while traveling on the Robert Kennedy funeral train. It is a powerful series of images that have always resonated deeply with me.

Paul Fusco, RFK funeral train, 1968

I was 14 years old in 1968, undoubtedly the most tumultuous year since World War II–at least in the western world. Although I was too young to be seriously engaged in what was going on, I was acutely aware of the epic events occurring–Vietnam, civil rights, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and the violent end to Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia.

Two exhibits I visited recently in New York touch on events of 1968: Paul Fusco at Danziger Projects (show closed October 4) and Josef Koudelka at Aperture. Fusco photographed Robert Kennedy’s viewers of the funeral train as it made its way from New York to Washington, D.C.

I remember well watching the railroad cortege on television as it passed the thousands of people who lined the tracks. I also have a distinct memory of a brief bit of video shown once, in which a train coming from the opposite direction mowed down a number of people standing on the tracks adjacent to the funeral train.

Paul Fusco, RFK funeral train, 1968

When I first saw the Fusco pictures, I was immediately swept back to the sorrow and apprehension of that time, to the fear and uncertainty that I have never been able to shake, a fear that rises to the surface today as a black man carrying the hope embodied in the Kennedy brothers nears the presidency, as earthshaking economic events rumble around us.

Fusco’s photographs were very simply made. On assignment from Look magazine, he rode the funeral train and did what he could from a fixed vantage point. He aimed his camera at the crowds and small knots of people standing at relaxed attention, some waving, some saluting, troubled, saddened faces, staring, transfixed, as the rail coaches slid by.

Paul Fusco, RFK funeral train, 1968

Fusco made his photos on 35mm Kodachrome, a vibrant slide film that stands up well over time unlike early color negative film, which tends to shift color and fade. As a result, these images from 40 years ago seem fresh and immediate, which makes them emotionally all the more jarring. The people depicted came “as-they-were” in a colorful array of flowered prints and decidedly unfunereal stripes and plaids. It was June and people came in shorts, bathing suits, sandals and bare feet. And although it was 1968, one sees scant evidence of the psychedelic trappings that so dominate our collective memory of the era.

The train passed through rural areas, small cities like Trenton, and big ones like Philadelphia and Baltimore where the faces are mostly black, people standing in scruffy backyards and vacant areas along the tracks. Some of these neighborhoods were in the midst of violent upheaval as racial frustrations boiled over after the murder of Martin Luther King. Fusco’s pictures, while freezing the momentary unity of grief, also reveal the racially segregated nature of a society coming apart at the seams.

Paul Fusco, RFK funeral train, 1968

Because the train remained in motion, most of Fusco’s photographs were necessarily made on the fly. They are fleeting glimpses, poignant, abbreviated moments of individual solitude among crowds. Fusco focused on the motionless people, rotating his head and camera slightly to stay fixed on his subjects, as the train moved horizontally. The blurring of the surrounding landscape further isolates the figures and creates a model-like hyper-reality, akin to recent narrow focus imagery created in Photoshop.

The images have a posed quality as well, due to the fact that people had staked out viewing positions, sometimes awkwardly balancing on steep embankments or even standing on elevated objects. As the train went by they looked intently at the coaches and often their eyes met the gaze of the photographer. In Fusco’s photographs this relationship creates a strange and compelling phenomenon–they seem to look at us as we look at them. Do we recognize ourselves?

Paul Fusco’s photographs have been collected in a handsome book, RFK, published by Aperture. It tries to be both a tribute to Bobby Kennedy and an art photo book, which I think is a little forced. The book starts with pictures not taken from the train of the memorial service held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and ends with the funeral in Washington. I would be happier without these bookends.

Paul Fusco at Danziger Projects • Brendan, my son, at left (digital)

The images as printed in the book, however, are nicer than the gallery prints, which are somewhat harsh and over saturated. The slightly more muted tones in the book seem more natural to me. Kodachrome is a punchy color material, but I don’t think prints have to mimic the straight slide film.

Monument Avenue: Grand Boulevard of the Lost Cause

The mysteries of my family history haunt me to this day. At times I have confronted my southern heritage directly, at other times I have run from it. Tomorrow I confront. I am driving to Richmond with my son to photograph the final days of the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue.

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

The scene I found in Richmond was extraordinary. Only a week earlier peaceful protesters surrounding the Lee monument were attacked with tear gas, pepper spray and pellets. Now, the protesters had, at least for the moment, occupied the circular park around Lee and appropriated the statue both physically and symbolically, altering its meaning. The atmosphere was jubilant.

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

At one point, a rather fierce-looking motorcycle gang roared up and parked adjacent to the Robert E. Lee statue, and my first thought was “this is trouble.” But they turned out to be the Redrum Motorcycle Club, a Native American club, based in Brooklyn, there to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

When the Lee statue was unveiled in 1890, thousands applauded the honoring of the South’s greatest hero. Black citizens were not among them. The black-owned Richmond Planet wrote at the time: “This glorification of States Rights Doctrine – the right of secession, and the honoring of men who represented that cause…will ultimately result in handing down to generations unborn a legacy of treason and blood…”

Robert E. Lee statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

A statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson stands to the west of Lee on Monument Avenue. Jackson was one of the most venerated of Confederate heroes – the notion that the war might have turned out differently had he not been killed by friendly fire at Chancellorsville has long been a key point of speculation in Lost Cause mythology.

Stonewall Jackson statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

Just two weeks since I made my trip to Richmond, the city has removed the Stonewall Jackson statue that stood on Monument Avenue and Arthur Ashe Boulevard. My understanding is that the city intends to remove all of the Confederate Civil War statues as soon as possible. The Robert E. Lee monument remains in dispute because of a lawsuit claiming that the deed for the property requires the city to maintain the monument.

Today, I watched the removal of Jackson live on the internet as riggers swaddled the statue in straps, sawed off the bolts at the base, and lifted the whole thing off the pedestal, setting it gently on the street. Jackson will be placed in storage for the time being.

Stonewall Jackson statue, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

Last paragraph of a letter to Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney in 2017:

While we do not purport to speak for all of Stonewall’s kin, our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought. We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.

As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context. We are in need of a new context—one in which the statues have been taken down.
Respectfully,

William Jackson Christian
Warren Edmund Christian
Great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

J.E.B. Stuart, Frederick Moynihan, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

The most animated of the statues along Monument Avenue is that of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart. It stands in a small traffic circle and its sloped base attracts wheeled acrobatics – at least it does now.

J.E.B. Stuart, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

Jefferson Davis gravesite, Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia – © Brian Rose

I was born and raised in Virginia, and my family lived two years in Richmond. We moved to Williamsburg down the peninsula after that. I attended the University of Virginia before departing for New York where I have lived for most of my life.

Some of my ancestors were slave owners. One or more of my ancestors were Creek Indians. Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. My great, great, great grandfather on my mother’s side was a corporal in the Confederate army – he died in the Battle of Vicksburg. My uncle had a hog trucking business located in Courtland, Virginia, where Nat Turner led his bloody slave uprising in 1831. My father told me that he once woke in the middle of the night to a cross burning in their front yard. They were targeted by the KKK. I do not know why. The mysteries of my family history haunt me to this day. At times I have confronted my southern heritage directly – at other times I have run from it. Tomorrow I confront.

I am driving to Richmond with my son to photograph the final days of the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue. Protesters pulled down Jefferson Davis last night. The plinth of Robert E. Lee is covered in graffiti. J.E.B. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson’s days are numbered. I don’t know what to expect but am prepared for anything.

McCarren Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Covid-19 lockdown – © Brian Rose

In 1981, the songwriter Jack Hardy and I created something called the Fast Folk Musical Magazine. It was a monthly album/publication that was recorded in a home studio and typed up on an IBM Selectric. The recordings were simple, unadorned, mostly first takes. The idea was to provide a platform for a community of songwriters mostly ignored by the music industry. We had no money, only time, and youthful energy. That project, now archived by the Smithsonian Institute, was an extraordinary demonstration of what can be done when the electricity of the moment is harnessed.

Creativity, often, comes with a sense of urgency or topicality that either finds an outlet or is lost. Sometimes, it’s necessary to seize the moment and work around established parameters. And sometimes it’s necessary, even, to take to the streets, as we are seeing so vividly.

McCarren Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence – © Brian Rose

I began shooting “In Time of Plague” in the third week of March when the Covid-19 lockdown went into effect, and I should have books by the third week of June. Three months from start to finish.

Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

In a picture I took a few days ago of protesters marching through Williamsburg, one is seen holding a sign that says “White Supremacy is the Virus.” Susan Sontag in 1978 argued persuasively against the idea of illness as metaphor, and she was right, that once a cure for a disease is found, the romantic associations attached to that particular malady tend to fall away.

But we are presently in a moment of both corporal and spiritual affliction in which metaphor and reality become intertwined.

Frances Goldin at City Hall with the Cooper Square urban renewal model.

Within a few months of arriving in New York in 1977, I met three extraordinary individuals who influenced the trajectory of my life in profound ways. One was my professor at Cooper Union, Joel Meyerowitz, who was a pioneer of color photography. The second was Jack Hardy, songwriter, and leader of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Hardy died seven years ago and I wrote an extended essay about him here. The third was Frances Goldin, the guiding force behind the Cooper Square Committee, a housing advocacy organization located on East 4^th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue.

Having begun my studies as an urban design major in the architecture school of the University of Virginia, the work of the committee was of particular interest to me. I was subletting an apartment in a city-owned tenement that was part of the Cooper Square urban renewal area, which covered a dozen blocks of the East  Village,  and as I discovered, was originally slated for demolition and replacement with low-income projects. It was a typical Robert Moses slash and burn initiative, the kind that had already reshaped the topography of extensive parts of the city. Moses’ bulldozers were kept at bay here, and his plan to run an expressway through Soho and the Lower East also came to a grinding halt, though not before dozens of buildings were torn down near the Williamsburg Bridge and thousands displaced. Those vacant lots stood empty for 50 years – a book could be written about the epic struggle over that site – until 2011 when an agreement was reached with the community to allow rebuilding.

Seward Park Urban Renewal Area in 1980 – photo © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty

One of the key figures in stopping these two projects was Frances Goldin. She and Jane Jacobs, who wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, were aligned in the fight against Moses’ freeway, and she and urban planner Walter Thabit came together to defeat Moses in Cooper Square, in part, by proposing an alternate plan that preserved the right of residents to return to any new housing built on the site. Jacobs’ simple idea – which at the time bucked conventional thinking – was that cities were just fine the way they were. That fine-grained neighborhoods were preferable to towers-in-the-park mega-developments, and ultimately, that people should come before infrastructure.

Cover of Time and Space on the Lower East Sode – East 4th Street 1980 – © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty

When I first got involved with the Cooper Square Committee I was perceived as a somewhat suspect outsider. Frances Goldin was 30 years older than I, a born and bred New Yorker, Jewish, and an openly avowed communist. I was a newcomer from Virginia, an artist attending an elite college, and while politically engaged, hardly sympathetic to an economic theory that had inspired ruthless dictatorships like the Soviet Union and China. On paper, this should not have led to a productive and warm relationship.

The fact that it did, I ascribe largely to Fran, who it turns out, welcomed everyone into the fold as long as you shared the same basic goals, which centered on preserving and creating affordable housing and organizing people against the powers that be. The way in which she assumed the role as spokesman for poor people of color sometimes gave me pause, but she never wavered in her commitment, and never gave anyone reason to doubt her sincerity. And as a result, she built strong bridges between ethnic groups, particularly with the large Latino community on the Lower East Side.

In 1980, when I joined Cooper Square’s steering committee, Walter Thabit’s alternate plan for the neighborhood was, to a great extent, moribund. Although it had survived multiple changes in City Hall, the free-flowing tap of money for housing from the federal government had slowed to a trickle, making new construction, which was a basic component of Thabit’s plan, unworkable. Following the lead of steering committee member Chuck Ritchie, I argued that we should shift our focus to preserving the existing tenement buildings and limiting new construction to the largely vacant sites on either side of Houston Street. One piece of the alternate plan was finally built at the corner of Stanton Street and the Bowery, but budget constraints resulted in a building stripped of almost all architectural merit. It was much-needed housing – and still is – but created a deadening presence on the street. It is a monolithic brick edifice partially set back from the street with no shops or “eyes on the street,” the opposite of Jane Jacobs’ concept of urbanity.

Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area 1980 – © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty

Eventually, the Cooper Square Committee hammered out a memorandum of understanding with the city green lighting new development on the largely vacant lots on Houston Street, and the rehabilitation of the tenement buildings on 3^rdand 4^th Streets. A quarter of the new development was subsidized housing, and when you added in the preservation of the existing housing, it came to almost 1,000 units of low-cost housing. In getting to that agreement, which was approved by Mayor David Dinkins, I participated in a series of difficult but ultimately productive meetings with Fran and city representatives. I was sometimes the lead negotiator for our side, but everyone knew that it was only with Goldin’s assent that things would go forward. I knew that she would never back down from our core goals, and the city understood that our strength as sponsoring organization lay in a highly engaged constituency and well-developed political alliances. Our power to negotiate was achieved by years of organizing and protesting – that was Frances Goldin.

But there was something else. Frances Goldin was inspirational. She was eloquent, charismatic, and brilliant, and that overflowing cornucopia of qualities made her a formidable presence. You could not say no to Frances Goldin. If we needed a spread of food for a meeting, she would go to Abe Lebwohl of the Second Avenue Deli and ask him to donate. He could not refuse. When she demanded that the city include a community swimming pool in the new development to replace one lost years before, the city could not say no. And when she demanded that the Liz Christy Garden at the Bowery and Houston be preserved, the city could not say no.

In 1987 a group of young Dutch students came to New York to study the effects of gentrification, which even then, was a hot topic. The students gathered in the Cooper Square office and Frances Goldin talked about the history of the organization, our achievements, and what we hoped to accomplish in the future. One of the students present was Renee Schoonbeek, who said that Fran looked out at the group and focusing her eyes on her said, “we need you to help us in what we are doing.”

That appeal resonated with Renee, who two years later came back to New York with her friend Josja van der Veer, to intern with the Cooper Square Committee. Together we worked on a plan to place all of the renovated tenement buildings into a mutual housing association, an innovative tenant coop designed to maintain low-cost housing into perpetuity. Key players in that effort were Val Orselli, long-time Cooper Square director, and urban planner Brian Sullivan. That organization continues to manage and maintain over two dozen apartment buildings.

Renee and I worked closely together for several months attending meetings that were often contentious and even dispiriting. But we persevered, and our relationship deepened. Renee, on a temporary visa, had to return to the Netherlands, and as I like to say, the separation failed. We were married in 1993, and Renee went on to become a successful urban planner, and we have a son Brendan who is studying journalism. Josja is now the head of real estate for the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam.

I have no doubt that it was Frances Goldin’s entreaty to come help that brought us together.

Frances Goldin and I at an exhibition about the Seward Park Urban Renewal area.

One of the last times I saw Fran before her passing a week ago, I asked her if she felt that she, and we collectively, had been successful in our efforts. She said, “Yes, absolutely. We won.” She was right, but I was almost surprised to hear it from someone who believed that the fight was never-ending. She knew what she had accomplished, and I was gratified that at the end of her life she felt that sense of closure, even triumph. What a life, lived to the fullest.

In Time of Plague is a comprehensive portrait of Williamsburg, Brooklyn made at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I made 16 walks through the neighborhood, reaching virtually every corner of this sprawling part of the city.

I have witnessed this city’s ups and downs for almost five decades – the bankrupt 70s, AIDs in the 80s, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and the city’s recent economic ascendance. This Spring, with the trees bursting into bloom, the city that never sleeps came to an almost unthinkable halt. These photographs document that moment when time seemed to freeze, when the crowds dispersed, when the stage was left vacant, and, for once, the show did not go on.

In Time of Plague, the book, will soon be available for presale on Kickstarter.
The link is here.

I could have taken my time, and shopped the book concept around with publishers. But there are times when the urgency of the moment requires more speed. This, I believe, is one of those moments. I hope you will support the project on Kickstarter.

Peter Beard (on ladder) and Marvin Israel at ICP, 1977 – photo by Orin Langelle

One of the first jobs I had in New York while attending Cooper Union was as a part-time exhibition installer at the International Center of Photography. As fate would have it the first big show I worked on was the infamous Peter Beard extravaganza “The End of the Game.” It was quite an introduction to the New York world of money and glamor. Beard was a lanky, blond, dashing adventurer/photographer who championed the cause of protecting the wild game of Africa, elephants in particular. He died recently on Montauk at 82, suffering from dementia he wandered away and was missing for a number of days before his body was found.

Peter Beard retrieve tattered mural (that’s me on the far right) – photo by Orin Langelle

In 1977, ICP was housed in a mansion on 94^th Street on the corner of Fifth Avenue. It was a beautiful space for photography, though difficult to work with because its interiors, including wood paneling and wainscoting, had to be preserved. Guest designer extraordinaire Marvin Israel was brought in to transform the galleries into an immersive environment with floor pieces and tableaus evoking the African savanna, and on the outside corner of the building, a giant JR sized black and white image of an elephant. The wind blew it down shortly after its mounting, and much hilarity ensued as we ran out into Fifth Avenue collecting the tattered shreds of canvas.

Beard was present and hands-on throughout the installation of the exhibit often with one or more fashion models in tow, and the buzz about him was palpable. To his credit, he was very nice to those of us working on the show. But let me just say that this exhibit was one absolutely over the top mishegoss, a funhouse display of Beard’s elaborate diaries, photographs, collected objects, and the charred remnants of his archive largely destroyed in a house fire. There was something deeply disturbing to me about the whole enterprise, not the least of which was the way that Beard came off as a great white hunter, albeit with a camera, who while acting to save the animals of Africa was simultaneously romanticizing and fetishizing an Africa that we would now characterize as a neo-colonial western perspective.

Andy Warhol at the Peter Beard opening at ICP – photo by Orin Langelle

The opening at ICP was a mosh pit of the rich and famous including Jackie Kennedy, Kurt Vonnegut, and Andy Warhol. That was the closest I ever got to Warhol until a few years later when one of my photographs was hung next to one of his prints in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But I digress. Larry Fink, one of my professors at Cooper photographed the opening and made some great images. I guess everybody headed for Studio 54 after that – I ended up back at my tenement on East 4^th Street. The things is, I could not understand what the whole whoop-de-doo around Peter Beard was all about. I still can’t.

Peter Beard opening at ICP – photo by Larry Fiink

Even in death, his mystique continues. The Times in an obituary for the ages described him as “as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town.” I came across a piece by Anna Winand who was Cornell Capa’s (director of ICP) assistant who describes his presence in the same melodramatic fashion: “His wild African energy was overwhelming; when he was at ICP the building shook.” I don’t remember any shaking myself, but she then recalls an incident that I was very much a part of. She writes: “What I do remember is Peter asking me to call the Central Park Zoo for elephant turd. I did, we got some, and Peter placed a pile in each of the two fireplaces.”

I was the guy who went and fetched the elephant turd from the zoo. Two green trash bags of it.

I walked up the Williamsburg Bridge the other day and made this photograph. I timed it for the light and knew the spot from previous walks. Most of the bridge walkway is surrounded by a chainlink-like mesh, but there are places where you can wedge a small camera lens in between.

It’s a view that in one swoop takes in so much of what Williamsburg is about in 2020. There are still a few 19th-century houses and tenements, low one-story factory buildings, large loft buildings, and recently, many new condominiums. Everything not actively maintained is covered in graffiti, and murals decorate many of the sides of older buildings. You can just make out the Manhattan Bridge to the right of the glass towers that stand on the edge of the East River.

From the Williamsburg Bridge – South 6th and Wythe Avenue – © Brian Rose

From the Williamsburg Bridge – South 6th and Wythe Avenue – photo by Joji Hashiguchi

I came across the image above by the Japanese photographer Jaji Hashiguchi. It is essentially the same view as my photo made around 1980. It’s not typical of Hashiguchi’s deeply resonant street-oriented photography from that era, but it provides topographical context for his more intimate views of young people in Tokyo, New York, and Berlin. His book, “We Have No Place to Be 1980-1982,” has recently been re-released.

There are only a few shared reference points in my image and Hashiguchi’s – the Manhattan Bridge tower, the brick smokestack at center right, and the one-story building at the corner of Wythe and South 6th at bottom left. The large loft building at rear left in Hashiguchi’s image is still there, but is now obscured by new buildings.

It’s an incredible juxtaposition.

We Have No Place to Be 1980-1982 

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

I’ve now made nine walks through Williamsburg in the past couple of weeks – basically since the coronavirus crisis took hold. There are some photographs that include evidence of the epidemic, but most do not. Although I have made photographs on rainy days, the weather, in general, has been beautiful as early Spring in New York tends to be. The trees are blooming, daffodils are poking up everywhere, and it has become hard to decide what to wear – too cold for short sleeves, but too warm for a coat.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

I am reminded of what I said to another photographer many years ago. Someone who was having a hard time adjusting to the wave of color taking over the architectural photography field, and photography in general. He was troubled by the insipidness of color – he said that is was too cheerful, too glib.

He knew, of course, that I was an early adopter of color, someone who had made the break from black and white and never looked back. My response was that I did not uncritically assign meaning to color – that I believed these were cultural cliches to be resisted. A blue sky was a blue sky, not a signifier of something predetermined. I was aware, naturally, of the tendency for people to make these associations – I took that into account when making my pictures. But on principle, I let the facts speak for themselves, and people could make of it what they wanted.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

Woodhull Medical Center, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

And so here we are. The city in the grip of a plague. The streets largely empty, and the weather does not care. The sky relentlessly blue, or just blue because it is.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I have now made six walks through Williamsburg, Brooklyn since hunkering down with my family. Maintaining distance from others has been easy given that there are few people in the streets. It is an eerie feeling – as if I have the whole city to myself. Other than the emptiness, there are only a few signs that the city is in distress. An artist has stenciled some relevant messages. People line up for supermarkets and pharmacies, which are limiting the number of patrons at any one time. Lots of people are wearing masks.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I am calling my new (unwelcome) project Williamsburg, Brooklyn – In Time of Plague. I have thought of photographing the neighborhood before but always rejected the idea because I didn’t feel I had an angle or overarching narrative that made sense. I don’t, generally, do random documentations of places. I need some sort of conceptual basis, a germinative idea, or a historical imperative. I have that now.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

What I hope to accomplish is a series of photographs that freezes this neighborhood at a particular moment in time with all the pictures made over a period of just a few weeks. It will be a portrait of Williamsburg – a place that conjures many different preconceptions – most of which are wrong. Despite a wave of gentrification, especially on the Manhattan side of the neighborhood, it remains an extremely diverse quarter of New York. The juxtapositions of new and old, rich and poor, residential and industrial, are often jarring, unexpected. Graffiti seems to have taken over every untended surface. It is visually a fascinating place where beauty is often found camouflaged in a rough and tumble urban landscape.

A more fleshed version of my previous post.

McCarren Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

In Time of Plague

As a photographer, the concept of sheltering in place is foreign to my instincts, but here in New York, in the midst of this invisible infectious storm, we have been ordered to stay at home. However, we are permitted the liberty of taking walks as long as we maintain the requisite social distance of six feet (2 meters). So, I’ve been walking the streets and parks of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, largely devoid of human presence, a stage set without actors, and no audience, still brightly lit. It is a troubling, but strangely beautiful moment in the history of this dynamic city, the daily ebb and flow of commuters from the suburbs frozen, and the countless flights from abroad grounded. We are alone in the world together – all nine million of us.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

Having done this work a long time – documenting the urban landscape – I understand the value of taking a patient measure of change and continuity in contrast to the more episodic nature of photojournalism. In 1980 I photographed the Lower East Side at a time when New York was crumbling, and many had given up on the city. In retrospect, it turned out to be a moment of rebirth more than a moment of decline. My photographs serve as a record of that inflection point in history.

A few years later, I photographed the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. I did not know when I started that project that the wall would soon open, that democracy would sweep across eastern Europe, and my work would constitute a key document of that time.

Before 9/11, I made many photographs of lower Manhattan that included the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers as ubiquitous signposts on the skyline. After their destruction, I continued to photograph the site, collecting visual evidence, following the gradual rebuilding of the city. I had no special access. No commission. I just did what I do as a photographer.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

The greatest lesson for me, as obvious as it may be, is to never take anything for granted. Even the most seemingly permanent of structures – physical, political, cultural – can disappear in the blink of an eye. The present is quite likely another pivotal moment in history. It will test our resilience as urban animals, human beings, living in a complex, dense environment. It will test our institutions and possibly our democracy.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

The pictures I am taking are not dramatic depictions of the calamity that has befallen New York. They are simply what I see walking the streets in this “time of plague.” The trees are blooming, and the sky is blue, adding insult to injury. Or perhaps, signaling hope that we will come through this stronger as we have come through great upheavals in the past.

Manhattan skyline from Williamsburg, Brooklyn – © Brian Rose

© Brian Rose – New York City

Having done this work a long time, I’d like to make a few brief comments about what it means to be a photographer of the social landscape – in general, but especially in challenging times. We are witnesses and chroniclers of history. Not the episodic events that photojournalists document, but the more subtle flow of change and continuity of the world in which we live. It is important work.

In 1980 I photographed the urban landscape of the Lower East Side at a time when New York was crumbling, and many had given up on the city. In retrospect, it turned out to be a moment of rebirth more than a moment of decline. My photographs serve as a record of that inflection point in history. Nan Goldin’s work, a more interior perspective, also preserves that era visually.

© Brian Rose – New York City

A few years later, I photographed the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. I did not know when I started that project that the wall would soon open, that democracy would sweep across eastern Europe, and my work would constitute a key document of that time. Others contributed significantly as well – John Gossage, Michael Schmidt, to name two well-known examples.

Before 9/11, I made many photographs of lower Manhattan that included the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers as ubiquitous signposts on the skyline. After their destruction, I continued to photograph the site, collecting visual evidence, following the gradual rebuilding of the city. I had no special access. No commission. I just did what I do as a photographer. Joel Meyerowitz, who did have connections, used them to gain access to the site, and unflinchingly documented the aftermath of the attack.

© Brian Rose – New York City

The present is quite likely another pivotal moment in history. As photographers, we have a responsibility to act as witnesses. Prior to the internet, photographers tended to work alone, mostly unaware of what others were doing. Today, we can shoot, post our work in real-time, and communicate with other photographers. This is a moment to seize. Some may be stuck inside, but most of us can get out and shoot, maintaining requisite social distance. It’s not about grand statements necessarily, but simply about what we see out our windows, in the street, in our neighborhoods, wherever we can move about freely.

Let’s do this!

© Brian Rose – New York City

Lakeland, Florida

I made a short trip down to Florida to watch my son’s college baseball team play – many of the teams in the northeast travel down south at the beginning of the season to take advantage of warm weather and get in some games.

I didn’t have much time for sightseeing. No Sleeping Beauty Castle or Tinkerbell. The Beverage Castle in Lakeland will have to do.

Shuffleboard, Lakeland, Florida

There are many, many, different Florida sometimes in jarring juxtaposition to one another. There are retirement communities of prefab homes with shuffleboard courts and disused pools. And there are retirement communities of McMansions and yachts. Here, adjacent to Snowbird Avenue, the old Florida slumbers on into twilight.

Snowbird Avenue, Lakeland, Florida

Driving southeast toward Sarasota, I left the Interstate behind and took off across the countryside on two-lane highways. I passed more retirements enclaves, factories, distribution centers, citrus groves, strip malls, strawberry fields, pasture land, churches – lots of churches – pro-Trump displays, and eventually, arrived at the glittering Gulf Coast.

Hopewell, Route 49, Florida

Fort Lonesome, Florida

Along the way, I stopped in a small town called Wimauma, which was largely Spanish speaking. You think of Cubans when you think of Florida, but these were evidently Mexican or Central American immigrants. There were several Taco stands, a couple of convenience stores, and a church that was just letting out on a Sunday morning. In front of Swigers Crates and Boxes, which was now a purveyor of cheap clothes, there was a display of face protectors – not to protect against the Coronovirus epidemic – but more likely for field workers to shield the sun and filter out the dust.

Wimauma, Florida

Wimauma, Florida

I saw a lot of baseball during my trip, including a Yankees Spring Training game. Gleyber Torres his a home run, and my son, Brendan Rose, got a solid hit in a game against Union College playing in Chain of Lakes Stadium, which once was the spring headquarters for the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox.

Tampa, Florida

Winter Haven, Florida

Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Dorothea Lange’s work, and that of other “concerned photographers,” to use Cornell Capa’s oft-repeated phrase. As a young photographer, I rejected the style of photo-journalism promoted by Life magazine, and what I saw as the glib humanism of the famous “Family of Man” exhibition curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art. To me, there was an insurmountable gap between the steely-eyed gaze of Walker Evans and the empathetic eye of Lange. Evans pursued some of the same subjects – sharecroppers in the south, for instance – but maintained a certain distance. He described what he saw in stoic terms rather than attempting to express emotional engagement. That makes his images all the more powerful, in my view.

Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

No, I haven’t changed my position. But this is a really beautifully conceived exhibition, curated by Sarah Meister, (@momameister) that makes a strong case for re-assessment. To an extent, Lange’s photography has been overshadowed by itself – by iconic images like “Migrant Mother” – one of the most famous pictures ever taken. This image and other touchstones of the genre obscure a more diverse approach in style and content than is generally known, and they tend to limit her multi-decade work to one time period.

Dorothea Lange exhibit at MoMA — © Brian Rose

One of my favorite pictures shows a young girl on a porch with a scrim of vines in front of her. It’s from Lange’s FSA work, still her strongest. The vegetation acts as both a framing device and a visual barrier. The composition is rectilinear, almost a Mondrian-esque grid. The specific context or rationale for the image is mysterious, but as a viewer, it is not always what you know, but what you don’t know that matters most. The caption reads:  “Butter bean vines across the porch. Negro quarter in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Another image in the same grouping shows a somber-faced woman in a fancy automobile framed in an oval window. My first thought was of Rosa Coldfield, the embittered raconteur in Faulkner’s quintessential southern novel “Absalom Absalom.” According to a recent Times review of the show, John Szarkowski, the MoMA curator who first mounted an exhibit of Lange’s work in 1965, originally thought the image likely depicted a haughty, privileged woman looking out from her car. The title of the photograph, however, is “Funeral Cortege, End of an Era in a Small Valley Town, California.” The caption either expands or diminishes the meaning of the image, take your pick.

“Rose II” by Isa Genzken in the MoMA sculpture garden – © Brian Rose

“Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures” is a wide-ranging exhibition not done justice by my few comments. I’m happy to see it for a number of reasons beyond the fact that Lange’s work deserves reconsideration. I do not think that photography benefits from the new interdisciplinary format of the Modern, and an exhibit like this one, demonstrates why. Like many photographs, these are best seen in isolation, untethered by comparisons to painters who may have dealt superficially with similar subject matter. The history of photography is integral to the history of art in general, but it also runs on a parallel track with its own sequence of developments and its own internal logic. I greatly miss the photography department with its comprehensive presentation of the medium’s history.

The other reason this exhibition is so timely is because of its social and political content. We are living in a moment when the kind of engagement seen in Lange’s work is desperately needed.

Atlantic City in the MoMA store – © Brian Rose

I made a quick stop in the museum store on the way out and was not terribly surprised to find myself missing among the “Rs” in the photo book section. “Atlantic City,” my portrait of a city in the aftermath of Donald Trump, has not found its way into all book stores – and truth be told, I’m not exactly a famous photographer – though I am in the collection of this place. But then, there it was! In the wrong place on the shelf.

The Vessel, Hudson Yards, New York –  © Brian Rose

Yesterday, a young man, 19 years old, jumped to his death from The Vessel, the iconic sculptural centerpiece of Hudson Yards on the westside of Manhattan. As with any suicide, this is a tragedy for family and friends – even those who witnessed the fall – who are not likely to forget the moment.

But let me cut right to the chase. The Vessel should be torn down. Had this been a publicly vetted structure, something this visually aggressive and potentially dangerous would never have been approved. Hudson Yards – its buildings and open spaces – were privately developed, and there was insufficient community input in the building out of such a large swath of Manhattan. According to Curbed, “Hudson Yards is the largest private real estate development in the United States, spanning 28 acres and accommodating upward of 18 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space.”

I am not saying that this suicide is anyone’s direct fault – we can’t stop every individual under duress from harming themselves – but I am questioning whether due diligence was exercised in the planning and design of The Vessel. I am willing to concede that the intention of the developer and architect was to provide a public amenity at the same time acting as a magnet for shoppers and tourists. Let us hope, however, that it will not also become a magnet for jumpers.

This is not a trivial concern. There is ample research on the problem of suicide hotspots around the world. Famous structures like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower have been forced to erect barriers or nets to discourage jumpers. Will we now wait and see what happens at Hudson Yards? The Vessel’s railings are low and easily scaled, and the way in which the walkways funnel out as you go up the stairs provides an unhindered fall to the plaza below.

Audrey Wachs, the former associate editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, wrote in 2016: “As one climbs up Vessel, the railings stay just above waist height all the way up to the structure’s top, but when you build high, folks will jump.”

The Vessel serves no function. It is a blight on the cityscape of Manhattan. And, apparently, it may present a temptation to those who wish to end their lives in a very dramatic way. No one in New York wanted this thing. Tear it down.

East 5th Street 1980 — © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty

We here in New York are greatly concerned about gentrification and its effects and have been for as long as I have lived in the city — I arrived in 1977. I am not a native New Yorker. I moved to the Lower East Side as one of a cadre of artists and musicians that famously occupied lower Manhattan at a time when large segments of the city had emptied out. Fled. Abandoned ship. Left for the suburbs. Then the kids from the suburbs came back. They did great things, or they blew out their brains on drugs. I got involved with a politically engaged neighborhood group that fought against city policies that led to displacement. The city wanted to sell an empty building on Second Avenue for $1 to a developer. In those days there were few takers. We managed to save the building and turn it into permanent low-cost housing for homeless families.

Norfolk Street 1980 — © Brian Rose/Edward Fausty
Puerto Rican independence mural

I knew then, as I know now, that those who come to New York from elsewhere unintentionally contribute to this seemingly permanent dynamic called gentrification — whether we had money or not we brought wealth — a wealth of energy, ideas, and dreams. Some came for fame, some for money, some for sexual freedom, some simply to find themselves in a place that welcomed everyone from everywhere. Some were idealistic, some were opportunistic. And as always, there were the true immigrants from other countries, or from Puerto Rico, people who fled poverty, intolerance, and violence.

So when I hear the borough president of Brooklyn complain about those who come to New York from other places, who somehow don’t fit in, I get a little upset. Eric Adams, a mayoral hopeful said:  “Go back to Iowa! You go back to Ohio! New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is.” This is a person who does not seem to understand New York, despite (or because of) the fact that he was born and raised here. I know, of course, that he is concerned about gentrification and its effect on predominately black neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It’s a real issue. The demographic shifts that have occurred in New York since I’ve been here are profound, but they involve a complex array of factors that go far beyond our borders. Such factors even include the dissolution of the Soviet/American world order and the concomitant (and often corrupt) redistribution of capital.

Union Square Park 2001 — © Brian Rose

But the problems New York faces are not mitigated by devolving into tribal politics. That is Trumpism. Even in this most liberal and diverse of all American cities, the plague of Trump has crept into our political discourse. It’s not us against them. It’s not about who has a claim to true citizenship of a city that has prided itself on being the most cosmopolitan of places. It’s not the young people from Ohio or Iowa who are the problem. It’s not the Chinese fleeing oppression or the Central Americans fleeing violence. It’s not the computer programmers and software developers who come for the jobs available in the city. It’s not even Wall Street that is the prime enemy — the financial marketplace has been integral to the city since the founding of the stock exchange in 1817.

Hudson River Park 2014 — © Brian Rose

Gentrification is a symptom of serious issues that need to be addressed, like a shortage of affordable housing — not an excuse for pointing the finger at our neighbors and demonizing those who come to New York to realize their aspirations. Fix what is broken, don’t break what is our greatest strength — our diversity, our embrace of different races, religions, and sexual orientations — our dreams,  even our most audacious ambitions to greatness. That’s the New York I came for, and the one I still believe in.

In doing my Atlantic City project, I did a lot of combing the internet to find the quotes that are placed adjacent to the images in the book. I read several historical books about the city, watched videos and films, and looked for photographers who had covered the subject. I came across several but missed the work of Arthur Nager who photographed Atlantic City in 1972 when the city was at its lowest point. He reached out to me recently, and I want to call attention to his stunning images of Atlantic City.

© Arthur Nager

In 1972 Atlantic City was a desolate urban landscape. White middle-class residents had fled, and tourists had lots of other options on the Jersey Shore. The state of New Jersey voted to legalize gambling in Atlantic City 1976, and the first casino, Resorts Casino Hotel, opened in 1978. The Louis Malle film, Atlantic City, vividly inhabits that period of time, the twilight between the old Atlantic City of crumbling hotels, boarding houses and small-time gangsters, and the new glitzy Atlantic City of mega-casinos and a different scale of crime brought by predators like Donald Trump.

© Arthur Nager

© Arthur Nager

Go to Arthur Nager’s website and see the whole series. And while you’re there look at his other work — a whole career of urban landscape projects.

Although it has been 38 years since Nager photographed Atlantic City, and the skyline of the city has been transformed, there are a number of prominent buildings still standing like Boardwalk Hall seen above, or The Claridge Hotel, its cupola seen in the distance.

And we even managed to photograph the same modest hotel from nearly the same viewpoint.

© Arthur Nager

© Brian Rose