Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Back in Atlantic City…

The Oyster Bar, Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

There is no more essential New York experience than having an oyster stew or pan roast in the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. If you sit at the counter along the north wall you can watch your stew prepared in front of you. It all happens in 3 or 4 minutes — a half dozen Blue Point oysters are quickly cooked in clam broth in a steam heated pan, half-and-half is added, along with dashes of Worcestershire, hot chili sauce, and a sprinkle of paprika. The pan is then tilted, the stew goes into a bowl, and it arrives piping hot a few seconds later. It doesn’t get any better than this.

I once sat next to Peter Seeger at the counter in the Oyster Bar — he was alone — but I didn’t say a word.

Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

After an oyster stew, one must pay homage to Grand Central Terminal itself, one of the greatest interiors in the world. Look up and see the Zodiac. Be filled with wonder.
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The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

The Bowery has been known for a long time as the restaurant supply and lighting district of New York. Manhattan used to have many such concentrations of businesses, often with their wares spilling out onto the sidewalks. Does anyone remember dodging rolling clothing racks in the Garment District?

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The stores are still there — mostly. But new hotels and a scattering of galleries and restaurants have gradually begun to move in. I actually expected a more rapid turnover, but I think that the restaurant supply and lighting businesses will eventually decamp for the outer boroughs. Some will be pushed out, others who own their buildings, will cash in.

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery remains, for the moment, a wonderfully chaotic mess of street. There are still a few shelters for homeless men, vestiges of the days when this was New York’s skid row. Chinatown dominates the south end of the Bowery, as colorful as ever, while things have gotten quite upscale near Cooper Square at the north end.

The Bowery and Spring Street — © Brian Rose

Don’t stare too long at this picture — can’t guarantee the bright orange won’t cause retinal damage.

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Just a few doors from the cacophonous corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery, I came across George Versailles, a store displaying lots of gold encrusted furniture and glittering chandeliers. The faux opulence, the forced élegance. It vaguely reminded me of something. Oh yes…

Donald Trump apartment, Trump Tower — photo by Sam Horine

It’s Donald Trump by way of Louis XIV by way of Saddam Hussein by way of Muammar Gaddafi. Dictator chic — available on the Bowery.

The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

Not many know this, but  Hitler was obsessed with inflicting direct damage to the United States, and had plans to drop a nuclear bomb on New York. Ground zero was this exact corner — the Bowery and Delancey — equidistant between Downtown and Midtown. Fortunately, the Nazis ran out of time, and were defeated before they developed the bomb.

It is still an epicenter of sorts. Traffic going to and from the Williamsburg Bridge congeals at this point where restaurant supply outlets and lighting stores vie with sidewalk cafes for dominance. It feels a little like the center of all things.

Pell Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose

Grand Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Continuing my walk up the Bowery. Chinatown extends farther north than ever. There’s a lot of construction, but it’s hard to know which way things are going. It’s still a crazy quilt of shops, wildly diverse architecture, and crowded streets. In the late afternoon sun, shadows were sharp and colors vibrant. I made the photograph of the steel beams by sticking the camera through a construction fence.

Hester and Bowery — © Brian Rose

I was down on lower Broadway and decided to walk back to my studio by way of the Bowery. At Hester Street, in the heart of Chinatown I came across Who’s Next, a mural by Otto Schade, which depicts a bald eagle comprised of guns. Its talons grasp a bullet wrapped in stars and stripes.

Kassel Dummy Award submissions

I have rarely been successful at grant submissions or competitions. It’s a good thing I haven’t waited around for such accolades, financial or otherwise. I would never have done any of my Iron Curtain/Berlin wall project. And none of my independent book projects would have seen the light of day. Certainly not my most recent Atlantic City project.

I have dutifully submitted my books to the Kassel Dummy Award, which spotlights unpublished photo books, but I’ve never been shortlisted. Not this time either. But there it is —  my Atlantic City book dummy — in one of their publicity photos (top right). Oh well.

Stay tuned, however, for news…

down the darkening street

I have seen my fortunes fall, rise, and fall again
I have walked the painted line to where the highway ends
tunnels burrow through the earth burrow through the pain
rumble through the underground the rumor of trains

let me show you what we’ve built, staggering and steep
let me show you where we live, where we hunker down to sleep
let me show you this city deep and incomplete
let me show you where your heart goes down the darkening street

I have heard her poetry the clash of ice and fire
dots and dashes intermittent sparks that crackle on the wire
twisted steel the dust of years swirling in a gyre
the bric-a-brac of broken dreams in the pathways of desire

she was once my love my muse ghost-like in the mist
now I know, now I admit, that she does not exist
this towering tree, this tenement, this isle of rocky schist
what is real, what is true, what images persist

Music and lyrics © Brian Rose

West 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue — © Brian Rose

Thunder and lightening, torrential rain, then gradual brightening. Walking through steam clouds after teaching my class at the International Center of Photography. Downtown, Stormy Daniels, Trump’s porn dalliance appeared in Federal court, along with Trump’s slimy mister fixit Michael Cohen. Hilarity ensued. Somehow, the Trump embarrassment comes to roost here in New York and has devolved into farce. .

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Chaos reigns.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Entering dangerous territory. Trump is a cornered animal.

Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

New York City spreads out like an endless carpet across Long island comprising the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. I took the D train down to Gravesend just one stop before Coney Island on the Atlantic Ocean. The streets are lined with single family houses and duplexes fronted by elaborate decorative railings and religious icons.

Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

It is, apparently, a mostly white neighborhood, some Asians mixed in, A number of large housing projects loom off to the east, and consistent with the segregated nature of much of New York, are predominately black. We are in Trump country, almost for sure. The cheap ostentation, the gaudy appliqué, are clues. But maybe I’m wrong. I’m out of my element here. It’s a strange world with its own peculiar culture, its own aesthetic rules.

Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Many of the houses are built up above garages, I’m guessing to stay above flood waters. This area lies only a few blocks from the Lower Bay of New York harbor,

Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Some of the houses are set back behind driveways and are located in the middle of the block. Very odd.

Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Manicured shrubbery, and plastic tulips. This is an apartment building. Three buzzers and a well-fortified door. A wreath with a plastic bird’s nest, and to the right a wind chime. A bright turquoise hose hides behind the bush.

Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

I crossed over the Belt Parkway, which follows the contour of the shoreline in Brooklyn, and walked into Calvert Vaux Park. Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmsted were responsible for Central Park — Vaux designing many of the bridges and structures in the park. I have no idea why anyone would name this place for him.

Some of the park was under renovation, and there were two new turf soccer fields, in use by young players in uniforms. Further along I reached my destination,  a scruffy baseball field where my son was playing for his college team. Next to a parking lot reeds popped up out of the marshy ground, and a flock of ducks flew overhead.

Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

A player raked the infield dirt before the game began. A scraggly line of trees stood just behind the outfield fence, and in the distance a line of buildings in Coney Island. It was 42 degrees and windy..

Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

There was almost no place to watch the game at this field. The dugouts blocked much of the view, and there were no bleachers. Spectators stood or sat on folding chairs huddled together behind chain link fencing, wherever there was a glimpse of the field. I followed a narrow path between the dugout and some fencing, ducking beneath tree branches to reach a small area adjacent to a shed containing various tools for raking and tamping down the infield. I plopped my chair down and could just see home home plate and the infield.

Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

Baseball in New York City on barely acceptable fields in bone chilling cold. My son’s team won both games of the doubleheader. He got on the team bus, and I trudged back to the D train.

Astor Place — © Brian Rose

Last white rhinos.

41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis  —  © Brian Rose

Adrian Jovanovic Hall — proposed

Currently, the no name New Academic Building. A much maligned architectural wonder — largely because of its connection to Cooper’s financial problems — it was intended as a bold step into the future for the school.

Turning things around at Cooper was a community effort, but it would not have happened without the leadership of Adrian Jovanovic. His tragic death last year stunned everyone, but his inspiration remains a powerful presence. The board of trustees has adopted a plan to return to free tuition within 10 years, and hope, albeit cautious, now prevails where once there was much anguish and despair.

In that spirit, it does not diminish our individual and collective roles to say, that Adrian Jovanovic saved Cooper Union. He deserves recognition and honor.

Trade edition sold out. Limited Edition can be purchased here.

An update on my New York trilogy of books. It has been six years since I began this self-publishing journey, first with Time and Space on the Lower East Side, then with Metamorphosis, Meatpacking District, and finally with WTC.

Time and Space came about after being turned down by a couple of publishers. I felt strongly that this was a book that had an audience. I made a mockup using Blurb, the print-on-demand internet platform, and offered it for sale at St. Mark’s books, the legendary bookstore that, sadly, closed a couple of years ago. Surprisingly, I quickly sold out 10 copies of this rather expensive, digitally printed  paperback.

I decided to find a way to self-publish, and ended up by chance talking to photographer Bill Diodato in a pizza restaurant after one of our sons’ Little League games. It turns out he was a photo book collector and was interested in working with me on my publishing project. I’m not sure that any of this would have happened without Bill’s know-how and enthusiasm. We used his imprint, Golden Section Publishers, for all three books.

I employed Kickstarter to help fund Time and Space — and used it for the next two books as well. Kickstarter is crowd funding, of course, but it is also a way to build a base of support. Running a campaign is a tremendous amount of work, and nerve wracking as hell. I’m not sure I want to do another one any time soon.

Trade edition can be purchased here. Limited edition sold out.

After Time and Space came out, I discovered a box of negatives hiding on a shelf of my film and print archive. In it were several dozen pictures of the Meatpacking District that I made in 1985. I had developed the film but never printed any of it. So, I scanned the negatives and was confronted with a series of stark and powerful images of an utterly empty, ravishingly decrepit New York.

Unlike the Lower East Side project, where I re-photographed the neighborhood, but only rarely restaged the original shots, these images of the Meatpacking District demanded a more conventional before/after approach. It was a lot more difficult making the after photographs than the befores. Those were made over several days in the dead of winter, crusty snow and slimy cobblestones underfoot. The new ones required repeated visits to the same locations, waiting for the light, for traffic and herds of people, and for photographic lightening to strike. It did a few times, fortunately.

Trade and limited edition can be purchased here.

Thanksgiving 2014 I was on a train going to Connecticut to a friend’s house, when lightening struck again. This time, a sudden realization, that I had in my archive, the basis for a book that chronicled the history of the World Trade Center. WTC was cobbled together from various projects, starting with color images I made as a student at Cooper Union in the 1970s. It ends with a series of photographs of One World Trade, the intended replacement for the destroyed Twin Towers. Like my other books, WTC takes in the changes that have transformed New York over several decades.  For me, it is a visual requiem, an homage to the resilience of this great city.

I didn’t start out thinking there would be three books. It happened organically, building on the work I did years ago, tying up loose ends, retracing my steps as a young photographer. It’s hard to say what is considered success in this business — at this point I’ve sold close to 3,000 books — which is a lot considering that this was done without an established publisher or distributor. The trade edition of Time and Space is sold out, and there are only 100 copies of Metamorphosis remaining. As of this week, the limited edition of Metamorphosis has sold out.

Would I have done three books in six years with a real publisher? Not a chance. Would I have made more money with a real publisher. Certainly not. Am I ready to do another book on my own? Maybe, maybe not. After all the blood sweat and tears that went into my New York trilogy, it would be nice to work next time with a supportive publisher.

To all who have bought one of my books — thank you!

SUNY Maritime campus, The Bronx — © Brian Rose

It’s opening day for the New York Mets tomorrow — Citi Field is out there somewhere to the left of the umpire standing near second base. That’s the Whitestone Bridge in the distance, and beyond that you can just make out the skyscrapers of Manhattan. We’re in the Bronx at Maritime College. And while the Yankees will be making their debut in the Bronx next week, my son, who plays for SUNY Purchase, has been going at it since late February.

Less than a week ago, the field was covered in snow, and there are piles of the stuff out of view to the left. It’s 42 degrees with a stiff breeze. About 75 of us, mostly parents bundled in full winter gear, sit on folding camp chairs or metal bleacher seats. The grass is brownish green and the infield clay is  damp and lumpy, but it’s a lot better than the high school fields my son played on last year.

Baseball in New York City. Over the PA they’re playing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.” And then, finally, Frankie: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere, it’s up to you, New York, New York.