The grime from coal smoke blanketed everything. It was a monochromatic world save for the Easter egg colored Trabis in the street. This is Kollwitz Strasse in Prenzlauer Berg named for Käthe Kollwitz, the socially engaged artist, who lived nearby in what was then called Weissenburgstrasse. Prenzlauer Berg was the home to thousands of Jews, […]

It’s been an extraordinary few weeks for me personally, and certainly for my fellow New Yorkers. Less than a month ago, I was in Berlin retracing my steps along the former wall that once divided the city, and divided the world into two nuclear-armed camps. And then, on 9 November 1989, almost miraculously, the dam […]

For some time I have been scanning my 4×5 negs with an Epson v850, adding a tad bit of sharpening with good results. But I have wondered whether I could get better quality with an Imacon scanner. Yesterday, I scanned some of my Iron Curtain border negatives using an Imacon and am now comparing the […]

This was the third No Kings march, and once again I attended as photographer and witness to the unfolding trauma of the Trump presidency. The weather was good – a little chilly – but bright sunshine and little wind. Knowing that the march was originating at Columbus Circle, I posted myself at Times Square opposite […]

Over the course of a year, I have photographed the neighborhoods at the ends of all of the subway lines in New York City. There are multiple reasons for engaging in this project, but the strongest for me is a desire to portray New York as a highly diverse, multi-centered metropolis, one that has expanded […]

We took the Metro up Georgia Avenue at least two miles north of the White House in a busy, racially mixed neighborhood. I photographed the now iconic Banksy-inspired image of a protester throwing a sub sandwich at, in this case, Trump’s ghoulish henchman, Stephen Miller. Just a couple of weeks ago, a protester threw a […]

Although we planned the trip down from New York to coincide with the Epstein press conference at the Capitol, my goal was to get a photograph of one of the giant murals of Donald Trump that festooned two government buildings along the Mall. I’d seen photographs, but was frustrated that none of them captured the […]

I made a quick trip to DC to see for myself what was going on. Trump had called up the National Guard to put down a fictitious wave of crime gripping the city. There’s crime in Washington, for sure, but violent crime is mostly confined to the poorest neighborhoods, well away from the government buildings […]

The photographs we made in 1980 sometimes contain hidden secrets that we may or may not have been aware of at the moment of taking the picture. In this case, not quite readable at internet resolution, is a torn sign pasted to the front of the abandoned building at Stanton and Ridge that says “The […]

Diane Arbus is one of the most important 20th century photographers. Whether you find her images difficult to digest, or painfully out of sync with present-day mores, her photographs of outcasts and misfits remain powerful, and once seen, never unseen. Even her images of ordinary individuals feel slightly discomfiting, too revealing. Ensnared by Arbus’s camera, […]

Article first published in Frames, the photography magazinehttps://readframes.com/food-for-thought-the-problem-with-jacob-riis-by-brian-rose/ Jacob Riis is widely acknowledged as a social activist and a groundbreaking documentary photographer who, in the late 19th century, exposed the squalor of the slums on the Lower East Side of New York. In his impassioned advocacy for better housing design and educational opportunities for the […]

It has been suggested that I might have been paying homage to Andreas Gursky in one of my photographs of the Iron Curtain border from 1985. I don’t believe I was familiar with his work at the time, but certainly, I was aware of images by earlier color photographers like Shore and Meyerowitz, and subsequently, […]

The Aldo van Eyck pavilion at the far end of the Kröller-Müller sculpture garden is well worth seeking out. It is actually a reconstruction of a temporary exhibition space for sculpture built in 1966. Van Eyck is not well-known in the United States, but his influence as an architect and theorist extends well beyond the […]

There is no Nat Turner memorial in Southampton County. No museum or documentation center. There are only fragments of buildings, and Turner’s sword remains under lock and key in the county courthouse. Primarily, there is the landscape, largely frozen in time, as memorial in itself. How do you photograph that which is missing? How do […]

Williamsburg, Virginia – © Brian Rose I grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and as a result, was steeped in American history. I was a member of the Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums, and with the corps, played for two U.S. presidents and many other heads of state and dignitaries. Colonial Williamsburg, from the beginning, told […]

I just finished reading David Browne’s meticulously researched four-decade history of the Greenwich Village music scene. In my other life, I was part of this world – a fledgling songwriter, co-founder of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine, and occasional photographer of my musician friends. Although my role in Browne’s narrative does not quite reach the […]