Category Archives: Queens

New York/Lower East Side

Delancey and Clinton Street — © Brian Rose

On Saturday I went to the NY Art Book Fair at PS 1 in Queens. All kinds of art publishers from big to small, serious to silly, or both simultaneously. The museum was jammed with people, the galleries uncomfortably hot–how can this many people be interested in arcane and esoteric artists’ books? And where does all the money come from, since obviously, very few can actually make money on books of this sort. I don’t know whether to be encouraged or depressed about the whole thing.

I introduced myself at a number of photography publisher’s tables, showed my book around, felt like an outsider more than a participant in this book publishing mania. Watched people’s jaws drop when I told them I had sold more than 500 books since releasing Time and Space on the Lower East Side at the end of May. With no distribution. Nevertheless, few people I talked to were familiar with my book despite its getting a fair amount of publicity. The photography crowd is still not clued in, and I obviously have a lot of work to do.

New York/Greenpoint


Greenpoint, Queens (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

This is my America, from my heart, and by my heart. I give it now to my children and grandchildren, and to yours, so they will always know what it was like in America when people were free.

–Sarah Palin (from the introduction to her forthcoming book America By Heart)

Delusional and dangerous.

New York/JFK Airport


Jet Blue baggage claim area — © Brian Rose


Former TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen — © Brian Rose

Back in New York after a week in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was unable to complete my assignments because the weather did not cooperate. I had to get back to NY to meet other obligations, and am heading back to San Francisco tomorrow with a good weather forecast.

Top photo, waiting for my equipment in the Jet Blue baggage area–under construction. Bottom photo, catching a cab, the wonderful TWA terminal, thankfully preserved as an icon of modern architecture.

New York/Greenpoint

Random photographs while walking around Greenpoint, Queens a few days back.


Franklin Street — © Brian Rose


Franklin Street –  Brian Rose


Franklin Street — © Brian Rose


Commercial Street — © Brian Rose


Commercial Street — © Brian Rose

New York/Queeens


Queensborough Community College, Holocaust Research Center — © Brian Rose

Assignment work: In the past few weeks I’ve photographed an apartment building in Brooklyn, a residential interior in the same building, an NYU dormitory, an office in the Empire State Building, a residence for mentally disabled in the Bronx, a holocaust research center in Queens, and a series of photographs of the Hudson Square area of Manhattan. Next on deck, the Museum of the State of New Jersey, and a Columbia University academic building.

New York/On a Speeding Train


Sunnyside Yards, Queens — © Brian Rose

I’ve been busy lately. A number of assignments after a barren winter and spring. I get an email from the publisher of the Lost Border–this has been a particularly brutal year for the bookselling and publishing industries…

Basically they are telling me that my book is being remaindered–conveniently timed to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Brilliant marketing strategy. Give the books away at the moment when interest in the subject will be at its peak.


Long Island City, Queens — © Brian Rose

Speeding through the city on a moving train. I am pleased, however, to contribute some of my Iron Curtain photographs to a literary project timed to the 20th anniversary of the end of the Wall, a book titled The Wall in my Head.

The Wall in My Head combines work from the generation of writers and artists who witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain firsthand with the impressions and reflections of those who grew up in its wake and whose work, childhoods, and memories are all colored by the long shadow that it cast. The Wall in My Head provides a unique view into the change, optimism, and confusion that came with 1989 and examines how each of these has weathered the twenty years since that fateful year.

More on this later. Here is the book’s website.