Trees in Conversation

This year, I think I’ve taken fewer pictures and spent more time outside than ever. Perhaps it’s the city closing in, perhaps I’m simply evolving into someone new. In any case, last year the fall for me was all colors and this year it seems to consist primarily of movements. It might be the influence of a friend with theory,  and the idea that we are all bodies in space creating meaning. But there is also this sense that I can’t look too closely at anything of beauty anymore. I’ll miss these things. I do miss everything that I photograph, I suppose.

Light Bulb Awnings: To Have and Have Not

I asked George, the proprietor of Faria’s in Sunset Park, about his awning and when it might last have had light bulbs in the fixtures. Through a variety of translations and translators (this discussion involved a selection of passersby), he told me that loved using twinkling light bulbs in all colors as part of his display, especially during the holidays. The bulbs were fragile, however, and broke easily, and the two stores that used to sell them no longer have them in stock.

Faria’s Grocery
500 53rd St # A
Brooklyn, NY 11220

Down on 4th Avenue, this wonderful example of an atypical light bulb-driven display was still flashing, although who knows what will happen when the lights go out?

Park Slope Grocery
597 4th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Light Bulb Awnings: Bed-Stuy, Revisited

Brothers Grocery
734 Marcy Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216

Green things

Ferns everywhere in the Hudson Valley. Coated with light. Their ranks filling the forest floor. For what it’s worth, I wanted to stay there forever, but, of course, there were vistas to see and sandwiches to eat. Drives along the river and art. Whenever I’m in those woods, the industrialized past that defined the region seems so far removed from any present moment. The husks of old buildings filled up with air and motes of dust, their windows waiting for the next revival. And the trees that surround them themselves covered with vines that certainly beckon a new kind of destructive wildness and abandon.

Pilgrimage

For D. M. 

I went on a circular trip last week, full of visits to places in the woods that are landscapes of memory (but also full of briars and biting things, green and hot).

I visited history-laden waterways–new to me–with someone who knew them well. I learned so much about the place  and was very grateful for the lens.

We swam in the cold of Lake Erie in the face of an oncoming storm. A blue I’d never seen and clouds that shaped and changed faster than we could watch them travel.

The sight of patterns on a shaped rock.

We jumped across man-made boulders, inscribed with use, to reach more isolated places.

There was a an endless row of parabolic structures, their weight and purpose long gone. Covered with moss, lit by the sun, and ruined.

Old spans, concrete blocks by a huge, fast, river filled with geese and seagulls.

Documentary Impulse

Walking through the Bronx yesterday, I decided it was now or never for a project I’ve also talked about, but never made any moves towards starting. Or, rather, it was a beautiful day, my heart was full, and I was in a fine mood to begin photographing establishments with awnings or signs decorated with small colorful light bulbs.

Borinquen Grocery
486 East 138 Street, Bronx, NY 10454

100th St. Candy Store
23 West 100th Street, New York, NY 10025