NEW YORK NEW YORK – More work on my rephotography class. Today we went to East 100th Street to rephotograph street scenes from Bruce Davidson’s seminal 1970 show at the Museum of Modern Art. Sample images from East 100th Street. This turned out to be difficult because the block that he shot this two-year project in has been thoroughly renovated. Here’s the best effort from the day for me. This is my shot of where 331 West would be today (see the original Davidson image below). Not my best effort – there are a number of obvious mistakes.
Here’s the original – which will give you a fair idea of how much Manhattan north of 96th Street has changed:
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Late this afternoon I got on the subway and headed for Elmhurst Queens. I’m joining a group of friends for dinner in a Taiwanese restaurant that’s so good that it has no English language sign. You really can’t tell what the name of this place is (unless it happens to be “Parking in the Rear”). Our organizer billed this as the “Best Taiwanese restaurant in North America”. Who would know? It might be. Just the right ambience of families eating off of formica tables. The food uniformly excellent, with the exception of stinky tofu, which to judge from its Wikipedia entry is a Taiwanese specialty. It really is stinky, smelling like a combination of your feet, days old garbage, and excrement.
Elmhurst has been a Taiwanese neighborhood for a long time – since the mid-50s. It’s safe, pleasant and clean. The sidewalks are crowded with Tiger Mom types with strollers. Pretty cool. And in the middle of it there is an old Dutch Reform church – this was the village of Newtown until the late 19th Century. Here are some pictures taken with my Leica Monochrom and my 1959 vintage Dual Range Summicron lens.
NEW YORK NEW YORK = It’s Alexander’s birthday. I didn’t get anything that I really liked at his celebration at Blue Smoke, but walking downtown to join him there (from the Apple store on 5th Avenue where I took a computer in for some warranty work) I caught this. The building is Tiffany, which appears to have developed a tattoo.
Tiffany gets a tat
On this day last year: Yankees. Yankee stadium. That’s back when the Yankees were healthy. It’s sad to see how far they’ve declined in one year.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Here we are, on the street in Manhattan in bright early Spring light, with my new Leica M and a 21mm Super Elmar M lens. This is familiar territory working through the plusses and minuses of a new Camera.
57th Street
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A landscape day. Brilliant early Spring light reinforce’s the city’s three dimensionality. Here’s the back of a newsstand taken with my Leica Monochrom and 21mm Super Elmar M lens. The idea was to express visual clutter but not chaos.
Lottery
On this day last year: High Line. Shot with my Alpna and Phase One 80 meg. back.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Some barely ok images with my Leica S. I’m hard a work figuring out how to get the best results from this thing, which as I have mentioned before has replaced my Phase One 80 meg digital back and tech camera.
ConstructionRat
