Abraham Lincoln, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York — © Brian Rose The principles of JEFFERSON are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them “glittering generalities.” Another bluntly styles them “self-evident lies.” And others insidiously argue that they apply […]

Trump Plaza wall — © Brian Rose I returned to Atlantic City to continue working on my project — Atlantic City: In the Wake of Destruction Left by Donald Trump. I intended to spend part of my time on the Boardwalk, which in mid-August is filled with people and activity. But I ended up mostly […]

A couple of book notes. WTC, my latest book, was included in the Athens Photo Festival this summer. The selected books were placed on tables in the gallery so that viewers could pick them up and page through them. It would have been fun to go to Greece, but I’ve had a busy summer. Athens […]

I’m just going to park these here with only a few specific comments. It’s a very quiet, very spare series of pictures. Rather than the raucous sounds of an amusement park, it feels hushed, somnolent. Rather than throngs of people crowding the rides and games, it is almost empty, desolate. In the fourth picture, on […]

The Thunderbolt roller coaster, Coney Island, 1977 — © Brian Rose The last black and white photographs I took were in 1977 when I first came to New York. After that it has all been color — 35mm in the beginning, and 4×5 negative up until the present. I was in a hurry in those […]

New York, unknown location, 1977 — © Brian Rose Although my early black and whites are without question documents of time and place, I did not, as a student, consider myself a documentary photographer. There was never any question about the goal, which was to make photographs as art. Not some hybrid mixed media animal […]

Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, The Bronx, 1977 — © Brian Rose As I was scanning my 35mm black and white negatives from 1977 I came across a series of images that I could not locate in the city, at least at first. I remember roaming the five boroughs with my camera, sometimes taking […]

Madison Avenue and 41st Street, 1977 — © Brian Rose A story I’ve told many times — 40 years ago, today, i arrived in New York and found an apartment on East 4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue. At 9:34PM the lights went out, and I spent the night in Penn Station unable […]

Long Beach, New York — © Brian Rose Behind the backstop.

Adrian Jovanovic and NYS Senator Brad Hoylman — © Brian Rose Adrian Jovanovic was a hero to me. He is, tragically, gone — and the Cooper community is reeling from the loss. From the Committee to Save Cooper Union’s statement: But it was Adrian’s creation of CSCU that channeled that broad community passion into a […]

Cooper Square — © Brian Rose Peter Cooper — keeping his eye on the ball.

Trump Plaza (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose Most of the pictures of Atlantic City and Trump’s abandoned casinos I’ve posted so far were made with a digital camera. But I am actually shooting 4×5 film with the digital camera primarily for backup and preview purposes. It’s hard to appreciate at 72 pixels per inch, […]

East 14th Street, 1977 — © Brian Rose Going through some boxes yesterday, I began looking at my early black and white negatives. During the 1970s I shot dozens of rolls of film, Kodak Trii-x and Plus-x, along with dozens of rolls of Kodachrome and Ektachrome color slide film. Most of the black and white […]

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose After the storm. Long Beach, New York — © Brian Rose Children at Play. Rockaway Beach, New York — © Brian Rose Slices ‘n’ Ices. Kingsbridge Road, The Bronx — © Brian Rose Elevated subway platform.

Caesars Casino, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose In all the brouhaha about Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar I’d like to point out that I made the connection to Shakespeare in a blog post on the day Trump’s inauguration. I used the quote below: Men at some time are masters of their fates. The […]

Beach 116th Street, Rockaway Beach — © Brian Rose Despite becoming a cool beach destination in recent years, Rockaway Beach still has its scruffy aspects. There are SROs, nursing homes, and low income projects. There was a time when the beach was a convenient place to dump things — and people. There are also blocks […]

Long Beach, New York — © Brian Rose Despite the it’s bucolic “field of dreams” image, baseball has urban roots. Before the development of suburbs after World War II, baseball was a city game played in vacant lots, and even in the street. The development of the suburbs changed the geographic and socio-economic basis of […]

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose (4×5 negative) President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. He has built great relationships throughout his […]