Category: Photographers/Photography

Stubenrauchstrasse, Berlin/Potsdam, 1987

I recently received a nice email from someone who now lives in this street in Potsdam on the edge of Berlin. She’s part of a group that wants to more accurately document the path of the Berlin wall that used to snake through her neighborhood. You can see the border fencing reappearing in the street in the background. The fortifications did not always follow the border precisely, and in fact, sometimes deviated to accommodate existing houses, public infrastructure, and waterways. West Berlin subway lines passed under East Berlin, and even through eastern stations that were closed off and guarded.

I kept a journal of my travels along the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall, and the following excerpt pertains to the photograph above. It’s taken verbatim from my hand written notebook. “Anamarie” is my dear American friend, and occasional collaborator, still living in Berlin.

Thursday, 26 February, 1987

Today, Anamarie and I went back to Steinstücken in hopes of more favorable sunlight at the S-Bahn crossing into the DDR. The light was still not good, so we went to a nearby community called Kohlhasenbrück where the S-Bahn and other trains leave West Berlin through a corridor formed by walls. On one street the houses back up to the wall—large upper middle class houses from before the war. One, from the 20s or 30s was designed in a radically modern fashion. Across the street from these fine houses was a camping ground full of trailers, empty for the winter. Next to the wall was a platform that provided a bizarre view of similar handsome houses over the border. Obviously, this was all over the neighborhood. The inner and outer barriers are very close together here and one can watch the DDR citizens going about their business. It’s disturbing, voyeuristic and every word for strange that can be thought up. The DDR people did not look at us though we were obviously illuminated by bright sunlight. This community, I believe, was originally as a whole a suburb of Potsdam, which is just outside of Berlin. Now, half is on the West Berlin side, and other half, divided the wall, belongs exclusively to Potsdam and East Germany.

The Lost Border, The Landscape of the Iron Curtain is available on Amazon, but signed copies are available only from my website here.

Trump Plaza, Atlantic City, 2017 — © Brian Rose

On this turbulent day, with a nor’easter crawling up the coast, when Donald Trump seems more unhinged than ever, it seems appropriate that the abandoned Trump Plaza in Atlantic City would start coming apart.


Trump Plaza

On this tumultuous day when it is reported that billionaire Carl Icahn, friend of Trump, dumped his steel and aluminum stocks just before Trump announced trade tariffs on those commodities, let us not forget that the Trump Plaza — or what is left of it — is owned by the very same Carl Icahn.

Cooper Union — © Brian Rose

Peter Cooper statue by Augustus Saint-Gardens and the Cooper Union Foundation Building.
On the road back to free tuition. There is now a plan, but one requiring focused effort on the part of all, and trust, perhaps, in the vicissitudes of fortune.

American Grotesque

The innocent victim, wounds hidden beneath pillow, the wholesome family, white coated doctor, white roses, heart balloons, the gleaming modern hospital, president and first lady posed slightly to foreground. Smiles all around. Another day, another school shooting. 🙂

Prufrock Coffee, Leather Street, London — © Brian Rose

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

We stumbled upon Prufrock Coffee in Leather Street in Clerkenwell, a formerly industrial area, now full of architecture and design firms — and the gallery where my photograph is hanging. Not only was the coffee good at Prufrock, so was the food. I had an avocado toast served on a rugged slice of brown bread doused in olive oil and sprinkled with chili pepper flakes. Renee had an amazing “sandwich” featuring peas and a perfectly soft boiled egg on top.

We’re headed back to New York today.

Sto Werkstatt, London

At the opening of the exhibition Building Images at Sto Werkstatt in London, which features the 20 shortlisted photographs for the Architectural Photography Awards. My wife, Renee Schoonbeek on the right.

Sto Werkstatt, London

My photograph of Atlantic City.

My photograph (above) from my Atlantic City project was shortlisted for Architecture Photograph of the Year 2017 and will be exhibited In London — opening this Thursday. I will be present at the opening Thursday evening, and will be in London through Sunday, if anyone is interested in a meet up. I haven’t been to London in quite a while — should be fun.

Building Images #exhibitions@stowerkstatt, London opens on Friday 9th February until 27th April showcasing the winner and finalists of the #Architectural#Photography Awards https://t.co/XYYGn1sy53

— Arch_Photo_Awards (@ArchPhotoAwards) February 5, 2018

Book Cover Proposal

I’ve been working on a book dummy of my Atlantic City photographs. This a closeup of the former Trump Plaza casino hotel, and the crest once had a Trump logo in the center oval. Imagine the lettering ATLANTIC CITY stamped in gold foil.

Here’s what the interior pages look like:

The book includes approximately 50 photographs with text on the left and images on the right. The text pieces are a combination of personal observations, quotes from various newspapers and online media, and screenshots of Donald Trump’s tweets about Atlantic City. Fifteen tweets to be exact.

They’re great. What can I say.

Yes, sad for all the haters and losers. And for the United States of America now that Donald Trump has dumped Atlantic City and taken his carney show on the road..

This is a book that needs to get published — I just don’t know if anyone will take it on. I certainly don’t have Trump’s savvy for flim-flammery. But I do have a book that is urgent, poignant, and, in my opinion, important.

Richmond, Virginia (35mm Kodachrome) 1971

I’ve been think a lot lately about the early days of color photography, and I’ve done a number of posts on the subject in the past. I am making a proposal to do an exhibition at Cooper Union about the school’s role in the emergence of color photography in the 1970s. I don’t know if the idea will get traction or not — it will take a lot of work to put together.

The picture above was taken when I was 16 or 17 — around 1971. I had just gotten a camera and was shooting black and white primarily. One day I ran a roll of Kodachrome through the camera and ended up with several pictures that resonated deeply with me. All I could do at first was look at the slides through a little viewer — I didn’t even have a projector. So, I got a few drug store prints made, and the seed was planted. I go back to this image from time to time as a reminder of what got things started.

Here’s what I looked like back then.

Brian Rose self portrait (35mm Kodachrome) — 1972

Caesar’s garage, Atlantic City (4×5 negative) — © Brian Rose

Difference in scale — almost a photographic genre in itself — is stupefyingly on display in Atlantic City. And every city planning truism about livable streets has been blown to smithereens. Learning from Las Vegas, AC gets a PhD in architecture.

I am torn between celebrating the wanton caziness of it all and seeking the smug moral high ground on this low lying spit of sand. Atlantic City seems to be imploding at the same time as it is once again being resurrected. The story goes on — the gamblers play on in windowless rooms — while the waves crash closer and closer to the boardwalk.

Harrah’s casino, Atlantic City, (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

Atlantic City was built on a barrier island (Absecon Island), and for most of its history, was oriented to the boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean — a grid of streets with names anyone who has played Monopoly knows well. The backside of the island was mostly low lying wetlands.

The first casinos were built along the boardwalk, though few gamblers were interested in getting their feet wet in the surf, or navigating the crime-ridden streets of the city. And these being self-contained realms, access to highways was more important, and several casinos were built in the Marina district along Absecon Inlet at a safe remove from the city proper.

At one time, Donald Trump owned four casinos including the Trump Marina, which was sold at a fire sale price a few years ago. It’s now the Golden Nugget — the parking structure to the left in the photo above.

From NJ.com:

Swatches of colorful new carpeting were laid down in hotel hallways to show what will eventually replace the more drab patterns consisting of tens of thousands of interlocking letter “T”s, beneath the “Trump” name on each room door.

“We have been working on removing everything that says ‘Trump,’ but it’s overwhelming,” said Amy Chasey, a Golden Nugget spokeswoman.

Miss America with crown, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

The Miss America pageant was a big deal in the 1960s when I was growing up in Williamsburg, Virginia. Every year the family gathered around the TV set as we assiduously scrutinized the contestants, 18 or 19 year old women dolled up to be ageless icons of poise and beauty. Talented, too. Among other things, able to effortlessly traverse the stage in sky high heels.

The pageant has experienced many controversies, and gone through a lot of changes over the years. Certainly, its centrality in American culture has faded. It left Atlantic City for Las Vegas, and then returned again to this struggling remnant of a seaside resort. A relic, perhaps, of those simpler times that never were.

Now, we are witnessing yet another Miss America spectacle — it turns out the leaders of the organization are a bunch of sexist louts. Quelle surprise! A bevy of former beauty queens has called for resignations.The CEO was just suspended.

Jennifer Weiner writes in the New York Times: “It might not be enough. Nothing might be able to remove the stain of so much hateful, crude, sexist talk. It might be that we’ve seen our last weeping, rhinestone-crowned Miss A. making her way down the Atlantic City walkway.”

Meanwhile, our crude lecher-in-chief, whose sham embrace of Atlantic City left it defiled and desolated, remains standing. “Make America great again.”

The Bowery and East 1st Street, 2010 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose

Republicans in Congress rushed the bill through for other reasons: to combat the fact of their own legislative incompetence, to satisfy their donors and to honor their long-held belief that the rich are America’s true governing force.

The middle class and the poor were never at the heart of this heartless bill. They are simply a veneer behind which a crime is occurring: the great American tax heist.

— Charles Blow, The New York Times

The Lincoln Memorial (4×5 film) 1982 — © Brian Rose

There have been more perilous moments in American history — the Civil War, certainly — but few. The coming days will shake the pillars of this great democratic experiment. Be strong. Be prepared for anything.

The National Mall, Washington, D.C. (4×5 film) 1982 — © Brian Rose

Another of several views of the Mall in Washington taken in the early ’80s. Hard to imagine such emptiness on the Mall today, even on a rainy day.

Grant Memorial, Washington, D.C. (4×5 film) 1982 — © Brian Rose

From a small group of photographs I made in Washington, D.C. in the early 1980s. The Grant Memorial, by sculptor Henry Shrady, stands directly in front of the Capitol, an equestrian statue with dramatic depictions of battle on either side. In my photograph, the cavalry charge is shown silhouetted against the early evening sky.

Trump himself told us plainly on Friday night in Pensacola, Fla., that he will do whatever it takes to hold power, and he should be taken seriously. “There are powerful forces in Washington trying to sabotage our movement,” he declared. “These are bad people, these are very, very bad and evil people. . . . But you know what, we’re stopping them. You’re seeing that right now.”

We are far closer to the edge than we want to think.

E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

O’donned Memorial Park. “Online with a LIVE dealer.”

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Former police headquarters — originally a masonic temple.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

“Police Dept. moved to 2715 Atlantic Avenue.”

Atlantic Avenue, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Two houses.