Happy New Year! My family has survived its first year together in New York. For the past 15 years I’ve been traveling back and forth between here and Amsterdam, but for my wife and son, this was a new, and potentially challenging experience. Brendan has thrived at PS 3, the elementary school in the West […]

The Museum (Hell Yes! – Ugo Rondinone) The installation encapsulates the philosophy of openness, fearlessness, and optimism that surrounds the New Museum’s reemergence in the contemporary art community, as well as its history as the home of socially committed contemporary art. — The New Museum website I finally got to the New Museum the other […]

Hudson Street Webkinz–and cigarettes.

East 1st Street, The Bowery and Second Avenue, 1980 (4×5 film) In the post below I ranted a little about the supposed death of photography (Is Photography Dead/Newsweek) caused, in part, by Photoshop, a program so amazing that one no longer needs the temporal world to make images. Anyway, back in 1980 when photography was, […]

Tangier Island, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, 1984 (4×5 film)Is Photography Dead? Peter Plagens in a Newsweek article makes a mess of the recent explosion of photography in the museum/gallery scene and the concomitant use of Photoshop to create seamless fictional realities. Here’s the key paragraph from his article: Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows […]

Houston Street Manger scene in Soho.

The New Museum (4×5 film) Here is a wider view of my rooftop looking toward the New Museum made with the 4×5 camera. It was a crisp, but not uncomfortably cold morning. This is the back of the building, although, except for the transparent glass ground floor, there really isn’t a front or back to […]

The Berlin Wall (click for closer view) Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall 1989. Photo by Annie Leibovitz Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall 2007.

Today I launched my newly redesigned Lower East Side web pages. I’m planning to send out, shortly, the card above. As I worked on the new LES pictures, I realized that I have a surprisingly complete set of images of the Bowery taken in the past five years. This last remaining strip of gritty reality […]

Rivington Street It snowed on Sunday and for much of the day the city looked quite magical. Brendan, my son, and I walked across town and down the Lower East Side to visit the opening of the newly renovated Eldridge Street Synagogue, which as I understand it, will be called Museum at Eldridge Street. The […]

Calvin Klein ad morphs into New Museum ad on Houston Street Well, I won’t be going to the New Museum today as planned because they have already given out all the tickets to the 30 hour free admission marathon. The ultimate brilliance of the New Museum may be their ability to harness the full corporate/media […]

I traveled with my family to Virginia for the Thanksgiving holiday to visit with my parents–separately–as has been necessary since their divorce a long time ago. Extended sit downs with one parent or the other are to be avoided since they usually, unfortunately, turn painful. My mother reminisces about my growing up, remembering things as […]

Delancey Street (4×5 film) Another Lower East Side photograph. Garishly photogenic Delancey Street between Suffolk and Clinton. This one is the 4×5 version seen in an earlier post.

Clinton Street It’s four in the morning, the end of DecemberI’m writing you now just to see if you’re betterNew York is cold, but I like where I’m livingThere’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening. – Leonard Cohen (Famous Blue Raincoat) Houston Street a man lay dead on Houston streethe’d been dead for […]

The Bowery and Houston Street There will be a short period of history in which many of the cabs in New York were seen stickered with flowers. It’s an art project involving children from schools and community groups who colored the decals. Here’s the official website if you’re curious. Previously, such momentary cultural expressions might […]

Leaves and flags on Bleecker Street Without comment.

Richmond, Virginia, early ’70s I got my first camera when I was a teenager, a Nikkormat 35mm with a 50mm lens. I had bought it with my savings and hid it away for a year because my parents were not enthusiastic about my “hobby.” I surreptitiously shot black and white film for a while and […]

Silodam apartment, Amsterdam designed by MVRDV architects When the glass Richard Meier towers on the Hudson in the West Village appeared a few years ago, they were heralded as a new phenomenon. At least in New York. Having lived much of the last 15 years in Europe–the last few behind double height windows overlooking Amsterdam–I […]