NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I went to a lunch sponsored by the ICP that included a panel discussion by a number of photojournalism luminaries. Discouraging. They all said that its easy to produce good or even very good pictures. It’s the brilliant ones that are hard to come by. Everyone has long term projects and takes assignments in hell-holes at the ends of the earth. What’s the point of my daily photo blog from cosy New York and Connecticut (and various one-percenter hang outs)? What’s the narrative? What (if anything) makes my pictures interesting?
Tough issues. Maybe the narrative is my life; but wouldn’t that require me to get closer (photographically) to the people around me – family and friends? That’s difficult because they didn’t volunteer for this (another issue discussed by the panel) – I’ve had one situation where the subject of a photo asked me to take it down; for now I’ve resolved the issue by designating the post as “private” (if you look back carefully you’ll see one day gap in the public record) – I’ll figure out what to do with it at some later date. The lunch was in Tribeca; I had my Alpa with me (not much good at the lunch) and the light in the streets was flat and poor later in the afternoon. I finally settled on this.
On this day one year ago: breakfast at Kitchenette.
2 replies on “Tuesday January 10, 2012”
Your amazing eye and artist’s perspective make these pictures compelling. I love the pic of the New Yorker on the street. Since finding your website (through a friend of a friend on facebook) I have checked in frequently to see your beautiful take on New York and rural Connecticut. Inspiring, gorgeous. You clearly love it, and for me that is reason enough. Would be nice if more people saw them..!!
Your photographs make a perfect sense to me and they will be appreciated in the future much more that all that photoshopped crap that is forced upon us everywhere. And thank you for being persistent in this project. For example I failed at picture a day projects many times before, most often even before trying. “A vacant lot” looks like a perfect location for Bryan Peterson’s workshops. I went to one of them once and we spent several hours shooting at the place just like this. Got some interesting images.