Allison Joyce

Occupy Wall Street - New York

2011-12-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

OWS in Times Square

Eviction night at Zuccotti Park.

The next night a lot of the occupiers spent the night at McDonalds and a local church

Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground while Occupy Wall Street protesters clash with police in Zuccotti Park on November 17, 2011 in New York City. Hundreds of protesters attempted to shut down the New York Stock Exchange, blocking roads and tying up traffic in Lower Manhattan.

Right after I took this photo Brandon grabbed onto my leg, took me down and wouldn't let me go, screaming over and over "help me". It took the police about two minutes to drag him off me. I was really shaken up and upset that I wasn't able to help him. All of a sudden as I was wandering around the park a big scuffle broke out with the protesters and NYPD. I ran over and saw a handful of terrified looking cops who were completely surrounded by protesters. It seems the occupiers and police were physically fighting with each other and Brandon was on the ground getting trampled... A few days later I read this explanation in the Daily News:

"Brandon Watts, 20 — who remains charged with felony grand larceny for swiping the hat off a cop’s head during a spat with police at 1 Liberty Plaza — was freed Wednesday after Occupied Wall Street posted $2,750 in bail.
Watts appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court to learn that the case, which also involves misdemeanor charges for hurling a pen and an AAA battery at police, has not yet been presented to a grand jury. He also went to face charges on two other protest arrests that include escaping from the back of a police van and resisting arrest after stealing orange netting from cops."

The eviction night and 'day of action' were really crazy. A lot of journalists and photographers were arrested and our press passes didn't mean anything to the police. They even barred all the press from the park on eviction night, keeping us in a pen across the street. The whole movement seems to have really died down and Zuccotti is eerily empty nowadays. I'm interested in what the coming months will bring for the movement.

Vision screenings in Hispaniola

2011-10-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

One day in June I got a call out of the blue from Adrian Hong asking me if I'd like to volunteer to photograph a trip he was taking with Lumoon Vision staff and two optometrists to give vision screenings and eye glasses to people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

In late August, just as Hurricane Irene was about to hit New York, we caught the last plane out of JFK before all flights were grounded and headed to Santo Domingo. Over the course of a week, with the help of local volunteers, hundreds of children were screened and provided with eyeglasses. Some of the kids in the IDP camps in Haiti had extremely high prescription needs, up to +8 or 9. Even a few adults who had never had an eye exam before were screened. One older man in the rural Dominican was considered legally blind. The team gave him a pair of eyeglasses, around a +8 prescription, and he could see clearly for the first time in his life. I'll always remember driving back down the road and passing him as he was showing off his new specks to friends, wearing the biggest smile I've ever seen.

Screening kids in the DR

Queuing up for screening in the Haitian refugee camp in the DR

Stuck!

This kid was amazing. He rode the tail all the way across the river.

Eliot and the two cutest kids in Haiti

Haitian IDP camp outside Port au Prince

I wanted to take them all back to NY

We brought a few soccer balls from the DR for the kids in Haiti

Kids stand for portraits in Haiti and the DR before they're screened

Martha's Vineyard wedding

2011-10-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

At the end of September, after a long non-stop month of hot and dusty Hispaniola, Fashion Week, and the UN General Assembly, it was a treat to spend the weekend on Martha's Vineyard with my family photographing the wedding of my cousin Andy and his bride Angie. It was a keg party-crockpot wedding, and after being the photographer at so many stiff and stressful weddings where the bride is too frazzled to even enjoy her day, this was a breath of fresh air. When they came skipping out on the dance floor to Third Eye Blind's 'Semicharmed Kinda Life' I knew it was going to be a great night.

Congratulations Andy & Angie !

Seen on the scene - the creatures of the tents

2011-10-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

Held twice yearly in February and September, New York Fashion Week features designers from all over the world, displaying their creations on the runways. A small venue of tents pops up in Lincoln Center to house the crowd of celebrities, designers and models who descend upon the city. The event also draws its own share of notable and outrageous personalities, fashionistas, and those who come just to be seen on the scene.. (continue reading here)

À tout à l'heure Dominique!

2011-10-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

After three months of court appearances, sensational headlines and living in a fish bowl, a New York judge dropped all criminal sexual assault charges against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
On Thursday night, all the photographers were expecting DSK and his wife Anne to take their usual private car service when they went out to dinner.... (continue reading here)

DSK leaves for Paris at JFK airport.

2011-08-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

My photos from same sex marriage are up on The Legal Stranger website, a fantastic project started by Amanda Lucidon. The project documents the obstacles faced by same sex couples in America.

I met Amanda a few weeks ago at the pop up chapel and she filled me in on the challenges that same sex couples face.

With the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 a marriage was explicitly defined in federal law as a union of one man and one woman. This allowed more than 1,138 rights and protections to married couples including Social Security benefits, veterans' benefits, health insurance, Medicaid, hospital visitation, estate taxes, retirement savings, pensions, family leave, and immigration law.

According to Federal Law, these rights are not allowed to same sex couples, whether married (according to state law) or not.

Go to http://legalstranger.com/ for more.

A Week of Love in New York

2011-08-06T15:20:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday was a beautiful and historic day for New York when we became the 6th state to allow same sex marriage. Sunday was the first day that couples could wed, and when I arrived at the Manhattan court house at 8am there was a line around the block with hundreds of couples waiting to wed. The scene outside the courthouse was like a party, with couples and supporters crowding the sidewalk, even breaking out in song at some points with "going to the chapel, and we're going to get marrieddd!" Later on I went over to the Brooklyn court house and it was the same thing, with supporters crowding the sidewalk and cheering on the couples as they exited the building after being married. It was reported that the judges were bickering with each other, each wanted a turn to marry a same sex couple on the historic day. City hall across the street set up a sort of party room with free champagne, cake, music and a photo booth for the couples.

The entire day was amazing and I'm so thankful I got to photograph it. My entire shift I was grinning ear to ear behind my camera. I'm very proud to have been raised in Massachusetts, the first state to allow same sex marriage, and now to live in New York city. Finally the law here reflects our population.

Phyllis Sifel and Connie Kopelov (seated) are the first couple to be married in New York City

(L-R) Damian Ross and Gary Coshgrove kiss outside the Manhattan City Clerk's office

(L-R) Myron Levine and Philip Zinderman celebrate after being married outside the Manhattan City Clerk's office July 24, 2011. They have been together for 51 years.

Nastassia Heurtelou and Luz Heurtelou (right) are married at the Brooklyn Clerk's Office

Margie Baker wipes frosting on her spouse Edie Jud after being married at the Brooklyn Clerk's Office

Saturday was a whirlwind day. I volunteered at the Central Park Pop Up Chapel, where photographers, videographers and volunteers donated their time and skill to wed 24 same sex couples.

"I promise I will understand if you decide to eat an entire bag of swedish fish for dinner. I promise I will always do the 10pm dog walk. And I promise that I will always have your back no matter what life throws at us."

Bryn and Leila

Christabelle and Valerie

After the pop up chapel I shot the engagement party of Ken and Christina in SoHo.

The Strauss-Kahn Chronicles

2011-08-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

It's been way too long since I've posted. The DSK story took over New York back in May and I've been covering it almost every step of the way, along with the entire New York Press corps and half of France's.

The public usually only sees the finished story and photographs but not much of the hours that go into putting everything together so I've also inclded some shots here of the long stakeouts in the rain, hot sun, car chases, and the long days and nights that we spend camped out on the streets and sidewalks.

Media is seen outside the NYPD SVU headquarters

IMF chief and possible French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaves NYPD SVU headquarters in Harlem

Media gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court

Media is seen outside the temporary Manhattan residence of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn

This was my first high-speed chase and it was a little scary. The French press hired motorbikes during their time in New York, which I know is a popular way to get around in France but not so much here. There were 3 cars and half a dozen bikes chasing DSK this day.

Former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaves Scalinatelia restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan

Anne Sinclair, wife of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, leaves their temporary Manhattan residence

Doug brings key lime pie for a sidewalk picnic

Media picnic

Some media outlets were camped out around the clock outside DSK's temporary townhouse in Tribeca. After day 5 we all got a little restless and started playing whiffle ball, frisbee, badminton, kick the can..

The front page of the New York Post featuring former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is held up during a broadcast outside the temporary residence Strauss-Kahn in Manhattan

The front page of the New York Daily News featuring former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is read in Manhattan

Joe gets a little stir-crazy

A rotating cast of residents and tourists visit our camp site..

Balloons are delivered to former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn outside his temporary residence in Tribeca after a bail hearing

Media plays badminton outside the temporary residence of Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York

Anne Sinclair, wife of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, searches for her friends through the media scuffle from inside temporary Manhattan residence

2011-05-27T06:48:00.001-07:00

Strauss-Kahn: The stakeout, the courthouse and the lookout

2011-05-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

"It was the kind of day every photographer dreads – pouring rain and a 15-hour stakeout. Not only were my shoes soaked through, but my only flash had drowned by the time I arrived at the NYPD Special Victims Unit headquarters in Harlem. By 8:30am, a mix of French and American media had gathered behind the police station, awaiting IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s perp walk..."
Continue reading Me, Mike Segar and Shannon Stapleton at the Reuters blog here

On gender and photojournalism: a response to Paul Melcher by Melissa Golden

2011-05-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to put up a link to this excellent read by Melissa Golden.

“It took me too long to figure out that drinking massive amounts of alcohol and putting up with sexual harassment were not tests I had to pass to join the club. I now know it took me so long because I didn’t have a strong, senior female photographer or editor willing to take me in and tell me that ‘there’s another, better way.’”
-Melissa Golden

LIFE AND DEATH IN THE SUNDARBANS

2011-05-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Rahul Morol, 14, is photographed outside his home one year after being attacked by a tiger with his cousin while fishing. “After the attack it took 1 ½ month to fully recover. Before the attack I was not afraid of the tiger. Now I feel afraid. I don’t work now. I just play. I will never go to the jungle again. My father still goes and I feel afraid for him because I remember what happened to me. After the attack my cousin because much more scared than me. He was so fearful that he left the Bangladesh for India and he works as a painter. In the future I plan to be a shrimp farmer. I have no other plan. No other option”

In May 2010 Ruhel and his cousin Rubel went to fish for crabs in a narrow canal called Tuskhali in the forest. Sailing into these canals is extremely dangerous because the boat is surrounded by dense forest on either side, making it impossible to spot a tiger until it is too late. Ruhel and Rubel were sailing through the middle of the canal when the tiger leaped into Ruhel, clawing his head, back and chest. Rubel grabbed the tiger by it's paw and tried to push it off his cousin, injuring his arms but scaring away the tiger.

Khalil Gazi (left) and his relatives collect crabs in the jungle just 10 months after his wife Nasima was killed by a tiger. “After Nasima's death I went to Bandarban but I found no job. Then I went to Jessore. I worked as a laborer in Jessore. I earned 500 taka (around 5 usd) a week. I got sick and had to move back here and spend 35,000 taka (324usd) for treatment. My parents paid for treatment. I stayed here after that because I earn much more money here. I collect crabs from the canals and enter the jungle for honey hunting. Sometimes I sell shrimp. I am worried about tigers but I have no other option. I need money for my children, to feed and educate them. Three of my children go to school. I left for Bandarban two months after Nasimas death with my son. The first time I entered the jungle after her death I was afraid. I was terrified. It took 4 to 5 months for me to feel normal in the jungle again. I remarried to Rena Begum 5 months ago. Since being back home in the Sundarbans I am happier than I was before. I am earning enough money from the jungle. Sometime I remember Nasima when I am in the jungle. I remember how I had to carry her dead body out of the jungle and I feel sad when I remember. I have to live long for my children. I have to educate them and try my best for them.”

May 16, 2010, in the morning, after finishing their household work, Nasima and Khalil went crab fishing in the forest. While they were fishing on the banks of the forest a tiger snuck up from behind and pounced on Nasima. Khalil drove the tiger away with a tree branch, but could not save his wife. As she lay dying on the river shore she hugged Khalil and made him promise never to come to the forest again. She whispered to him, "What will happen to our children if a tiger attacks you?"

Ali Moti is photographed in her home in Moturapur. She doesn't know how old she is, but guesses she is 25. Her husband Nabo Kumar Mandol was killed by a tiger last year. “My husband was fishing in the Purakalla canal. Around 9am I was cooking in my neighbors house when I got the news that he had been attacked. When I heard this I was senseless, crying. I had to be carried home. I fainted for about 30 minutes. The forest response team took his body back to this town. I fainted when I saw the body. I was 15 when my mother and father told me I was going to be married. I felt shame and ran away. I didn't want to leave my parents and live with a man I didn’t know. My marriage was nice. My sister in law and I became very good friends. My husband loved me very much. Now I work to repair the roads in town. I have two children to support and I also have to support one brother in law and one sister in law. She will be married soon. I make 1,500 taka a month (around 14 usd). My brother in law is too afraid to work in the jungle. He works on the mainland and work is scarce. He looks for work every day but can only find work around 2 days a week. My son catches crabs, but away from the forest close to the mainland. He only makes 20-50 taka (18 cents and 46 cents) a day. I don’t miss my husband. I can survive by myself and take care of my son and daughter. Things are okay but sometimes I have to borrow money. Things are not good, but okay.”

Halima, 49, lives in Kodomtola. “My husband and son were killed by the tiger 9 months ago. They entered the jungle to collect wood. My husband climbed the tree while my son stayed on the ground. That’s when the tiger attacked my son. My husband saw what was happening and climbed back down to try to save him. They were alone together so no one knows exactly what happened. Fishermen downstream heard what was happening. They found my sons body and then the tiger response team and villagers went in the next morning and found my husbands body. Almost his entire body was eaten. Only his face was untouched. When I heard the news I went mad. No one would let me hear my husbands mangled body. Only after they prepared and cleaned his body for burial would they let me see his face. When I saw him I went senseless. I fainted. Before this incident I was much healthier. Now I just don't feel right. I have to work and I am physically not right to work. I make some money but once and a while I must ask neighbors for food. Sometimes I go a day without eating. When my husband was alive I didn't work. We always had enough and didn't want for anything. I regret that I wasn't able to help my son more. I wish I could have arranged for work in town for him, or sent him to school. This wouldn't have happened. I was 12 years old when I got married. I wasn’t informed of the marriage until the day of the wedding. That’s just how it was. I was his second wife. He had three children from his previous marriage. They called me “mom” which was so shocking. I was only 12 and the son was almost 10. The loved me very much, like I was their real mom. My married life was very night. He was very caring and loved me very much. I loved him a lot. I miss his so much. I still cry for him.”

The body of Muhammad Alum is laid out before burial in Gabura.

The burial of Muhammad Alum takes place at Gabura. Muhammad was brutally killed by a tiger in the jungle where he was hunting for honey. After countless hours of tracking honey bees through the dense Mangrove forest, Muhammad and five friends lost their trail and decided to head back to their boat. As the men approached their boat on the Talputi Canal, Muhammad suddenly shouted as a tiger mauled him from behind. Immediately his friends began shouting and running toward him, scaring the tiger away. While the attack only lasted for 5 seconds, the 250 pound animal was able to engulf the innocent man's head and inflict fatal damage. He left behind four sons and his wife, Rashida Begum.

The Sundarbans forest in Southern Bangladesh is the largest mangrove forest in the world. There are an estimated five hundred Royal Bengal tigers in the Sunderbans, and about fifty to sixty thousand people depend on the land, rivers and forest for their living. As climate change, hurricanes and cyclones continue to affect the area, the fresh water that once irrigated farmers fields has turned salty, rendering the fields useless. Many people live barely one meter above sea level. Because of rising sea levels and shrinking forest, humans and tigers are fighting for space. The farmers are forced into the forest to hunt for honey, fish, or collect crabs, putting them at risk for a tiger attack.

Please view more photos at www.AllisonJoyce.com

Sex workers of Faridpur

2011-05-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

An aging sex worker reclines in her bedroom in a brothel in Faridpur, central Bangladesh.

Overflowing buckets of trash and used condoms are seen of the 3rd floor in the Joinal Bari brothel.

Kajul is embraced by a customer in her bedroom of the 3rd floor of the Boro Bari brothel.

Pachey and Argu wait for customers outside their room on the 3rd floor of the Joinal Bari brothel.
"I am 22 years old and have been working in this brothel for two years. I was married for four years but ran away because my husband was crazy. When I moved back in with my parents my uncle took me to Dhaka. I believed him when he told me he was going to enroll me in a dance school, but instead he sold me to a madame. I am not afraid of anyone. Sometimes this place is okay, sometimes it's not, but anything is better than living with my husband. I don't talk with my parents anymore; I miss them, but what can I do? The people in the brothel are like family to me; Alyea (my madame) is my mother now. I love her and dream of being a madame someday." says Pachey.

Piea waits outside her room while customers browse the halls of the 3rd floor in the Joinal Bari brothel.

About 800 women and girls live and work inside the bustling brothel, comprised of four buildings situated on an important trading route on the banks of the Padma river. Many of chowkri (bonded sex workers) are underage. Some of the girls are runaways who leave home to escape a bad situation or marriage, and end up on the brothels when they have no where else to go. Many others have been kidnapped and sold to a madame by a parent or relative. They must take on 5-10 clients per day, and most receive no pay because they must repay their debt to their madame.

Please view the rest of the project at www.AllisonJoyce.com

Korail

2011-05-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Fish are sold in a market inside the Korail Slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh March 6, 2011. Korail is one of Dhaka's largest slums.

The Korail slum is one of Dhaka's largest slum with a population of over 120,000 people.

March in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

2011-03-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

Men hang shirts to dry on the roof of a small garment business in the Mirpur district of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Men work in a small jute business in the Old Dhaka neighborhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh. 90% of world's total production of Jute is harvested in Bangladesh.

A child sells balloons to a rickshaw passenger on the street in Dhaka, Bangladesh. There are an estimated 4.9 Bangladeshi children working between the aged 5 to 15.

A man sells shoes on the street in the Motijheel neighborhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The Korail slum is seen in the posh Gulshan neighborhood of Dhaka. Korail is Dhaka's second largest slum.

A young girl is seen in the Korail Slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

A young girl is seen in the Korail Slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Young girls are seen in the Korail Slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

I'm back in Bangladesh for the next few weeks working on different projects. It feels great to be back here, I'm surprised how much I missed this country.

2011-02-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

Very important article by Kim Barker about the Lara Logan assault.

"...I didn’t complain to my bosses. To do so would only make me seem weak. Instead, I made a joke out of it and turned the experience into a positive one: See, being a woman helped me gain access to the chief justice. I can’t ever remember sitting down with my female peers and talking about what had happened, except to make dark jokes, because such stories would make us seem different from the male correspondents, more vulnerable. I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me at home the next time something major happened. "

Everyone should read this.

Fashion Week, New York

2011-02-17T21:29:00.000-08:00

The Wedding of Tatiana and Ken

2011-01-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

I shot a wonderful Christmas wedding with Chris Joriann last month at the Scranton Country Club. The ceremony was beautiful and the brides family all flew in from Venezuela. I've never seen such a happy couple.

2011-01-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

So the article finally ran today and I thought I'd post some of the photos from the Plaza Night and Day Brunch I shot last month. This is probably my favorite New York assignment to date, my camera nearly drowned in champagne!

"It's a Saturday afternoon, two weeks before Christmas, and the Plaza Hotel is jammed. Tourists in spandex and sneakers are lining up by the busload in the hotel’s lower-level shopping arcade, while one floor above an altogether different — but no less frenzied — scene unfolds.

There, in the ordinarily-fusty environs of the Oak Room, a Champagne-fueled orgy of gyrating jet-setters, lithe gold-spangled dancers and Chanel-sheathed debutantes is taking place. One particularly enthusiastic young man, Gareth Brookes, 29, is triumphantly perched on top of a service station in the center of the room, drinking Veuve Clicquot out of his Tom Ford lace-up shoe....."

Read more of the fantastic article by Carla Spartos here

My favorite photo from 2010

2010-12-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

This isn't a photo I'll be adding to my portfolio or entering into this years contests, but it holds a special memory for me. It was my second or third day in the Sunderbans forest in Southern Bangladesh. Its the most beautiful place I've ever been.

We came to this village to photograph and interview an older "tiger widow", a woman whose husband was attacked an killed by a tiger while he was fishing in the forest. I was trying to shoot her in the road in nice sunset light and the entire village came out to watch. Any light skinned westerner who has traveled around South Asia has experienced this staring phenomenon. Adults and children follow you around, mesmerized. This makes life for a photographer especially difficult.

So there I was in the middle of the road trying to take pictures of this tiny woman with a crowd of 30 behind me spilling into the peripheral of the photo. Rajib and Nicol were trying to perform crowd control but the children just weren't having it. I was biting my tongue, getting really frustrated because we were losing light but finally yelled out one of the few Bangla phrases I know "aak ta ta por dibo!!!" (I'm going to slap you!) Which only amused the kids more. I finished with the woman and started wandering the small village to make some photos while Rajib and Nicol interviewed her. To my annoyance, this wasn't possible. The children trailed me everywhere, getting in all my frames, peeking from behind the huts then running away laughing 10 paces ahead to hide again. They were having the time of their lives but I was ready to throw up my hands in frustration. Our project was not going as planned, my visa was set to expire in ten days, I just burned my leg on the motorcycle and dammit, I can't even set foot in a village here to shoot without being the center of attention!

Then it started to rain.

And all at once I found the whole thing incredibly funny. I was in the middle of this tiny village, surrounded by jungle and UNHCR huts worrying about boyfriend drama and story woes. My bourgeois problems seemed so ridiculous at that moment. So I threw down my bag and one of my cameras and ran after the kids, playing tag, chasing them through the village. More and more showed up and one of them brought a ball. By that time the rain had turned the field into a small muddy lake but we ran right through it playing soccer, chasing each other and laughing for a good hour. By the time my friends found me I was having a blast, soaking wet, covered in mud from head to toe and praying my 5D hadn't drowned. As we headed down the road back to the hotel the kids followed us a good half mile chanting the two English words I taught them; "hello!" and "starbucks!". It was my favorite day in South Asia.

Right now I couldn't feel further away from Bangladesh. I'm sitting in my newspaper office in New York City, loading up on coffee and hand warmers, about to head down to photograph Times Square and ring out what has been without a doubt, the best year of my life.

Happy new year everyone.

2010-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

Art Basel in Miami, December 2010

Recent work

2010-11-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

New York's Village Halloween Parade is rehearsed upstate in Red Hook.

A revitalizing Fruit Enzyme facial is seen at Jurlique Spa on Madison Ave.

Loredana Jolie is releasing a memoir titled "The Real Diary: Lessons from the Good Time Girl to Champion." about her affair with Tiger Woods.

Adriana Lima promotes a new bra at the Victoria's Secret SOHO, New York.

Alana and Landon in Bedford, New York

2010-10-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

I shot the wedding of Alana and Landon last weekend upstate with the talented Chris Joriann. I decided to start to shoot weddings because I seem to be getting into that scary age where my friends are getting engaged, and asking me to be their wedding photographer, so I need the practice. But shooting Alana and Landon I realized I really enjoy shooting these events. It's such a beautiful time, everyone is happy, smiling and glad to have you there shooting. It's an honor to be a part of the biggest day of their lives.

2010-10-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

New York City Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and House Speaker Christine Quinn speak at City Hall about the recent spree of hate crimes in New York.

* Oct. 3: Three gay men, including two teens, are beaten and sodomized by a wolf pack of gangsters in The Bronx after one of the teens tried to join the gang.

* Oct. 3: A gay man is brutally beaten allegedly by two Staten Island men in a bathroom in the famed Stonewall Inn, the West Village bar where the gay-rights movement was born.

* Oct. 1: A group of men hugging and kissing on 25th Street and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea is accosted by another group of men, who yell anti-gay slurs, tell them to go home, punch them and toss a garbage can at them.

2010-09-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Burlesque shows in New York City and New Orleans from the past two weeks.

2010-09-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

Snapshot of my friend Sam from the other night in Manhattan.

TOXIC FASHION UPDATE

2010-09-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Reporter Jacob Resneck, was forwarded this press release today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
HENNES & MAURITZ AB AND LEVI STRAUSS & CO. ANNOUNCE GLOBAL BAN ON SANDBLASTING

STOCKHOLM and SAN FRANCISCO (September 8, 2010) — As a commitment to the health and safety of workers across the apparel industry, Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) and Levi Strauss & Co. today announced plans to implement a global ban on sandblasting in all of their future product lines. The two companies are encouraging others to join this ban in a move toward eliminating sandblasting as an industry practice.
Sandblasting is one of a number of finishing techniques used to create a worn look for denim and other apparel. When sandblasting is performed, proper safeguards, such as those used by H&M and Levi Strauss & Co. suppliers, must be in place to protect workers from potentially serious harm resulting from exposure to crystalline silica (a compound found in sand). But there are some factories in the apparel industry – often linked to counterfeit operations – which do not apply the same safeguards, putting workers’ health at risk.
"H&M has had health and safety requirements for sandblasting for several years. Like all other Code of Conduct requirements, monitoring of sandblasting practices has been part of our extensive Full Audit Programme. At the same time, securing that these standards are being observed by all of our suppliers and their subcontractors has proven too difficult. In order to make certain that no worker producing denim garments for H&M risks his or her health, we have decided to quit purchasing and retailing sandblasted products," said Karl Gunnar Fagerlin, Production Manager at H&M.
“At Levi Strauss & Co., we’ve implemented rigorous standards for sandblasting in our own supply chain but we decided that the best way to help ensure no worker – in any garment factory – faces the risks associated with exposure to crystalline silica is to move to end sandblasting industry-wide,” said David Love, Senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer at Levi Strauss & Co. “We’re proud to join with H&M today in a commitment to apparel workers world-wide and we urge other companies to join us in ending this practice.”
– more –

Effective immediately, H&M and Levi Strauss & Co. will not place any new orders for sandblasted product and as of December 31, 2010, H&M and Levi Strauss & Co. will no longer have any active production that uses this finishing technique. The ban includes, but is not limited to, the use of aluminum oxide, aluminum silicate, silicon carbide, copper slag and garnet for abrasive blasting.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
A quote from Aron Cramer, President and CEO, BSR, about this announcement: "I applaud the step that LS&Co. and H&M have taken to phase out sandblasting globally. The move they are announcing today builds on their legacy of leadership in ensuring that their products are made under safe and fair working conditions."

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Andrea Roos
H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB
andrea.roos@hm.com
+46-(0)8-796-89-37

Amber McCasland
Levi Strauss & Co.
amccasland@levi.com
+32-2-641-6348

It was also featured in the Financial Post

Our recent piece on Sandblasting in The Caravan:

"About 24 kilometres from the centre of Dhaka, in the gritty industrial suburb of Savar Upazila, down a narrow path, a small sign reads ‘Latest Washing and Blasting Industries.’ It’s not much more than a large corrugated metal shack with room for three young men, who work shoulder-to-shoulder. In the centre of the shed is a waist-high mound of white sand from the nearby Jamuna River. The young men are armed with pneumatic guns that shoot the sand onto the denim jeans, their hands protected by heavy gloves. A few spurts on each side are all that’s necessary to give the denim that worn, softer look that the fashionistas crave.

There’s no ventilation, save for bullet-sized holes in the metal roof where rays of sunshine look like tangible cylinders from the fine dust and sand in the air. As the men work, there is a cacophony of noise and dust and it’s nearly impossible to breathe—with or without a flimsy cotton face mask that is supposed to provide protection to visitors....."

Read the rest of the article with more photos in The Caravan here

Some recent work (and play)

2010-09-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

'eight miles a minute, for months at a time'

2010-07-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

I'm back in New York working daily assignments again, drinking Starbucks, appreciating first world amenities, catching up with friends, moving apartments and trying to get back on my feet. While it's a relief to have some paychecks coming in, I'm missing Asia alot. I miss riding around on the back of motorcycles, sleeping under mosquito nets, living out of a backpack, the crowded smelly trains of Kolkata and shooting the pictures I really care about. I'm counting my days and dollars until I can make it back to Bangladesh again to continue the tiger project with Rajib.

Sunderbans, Bangladesh

2010-05-31T00:45:00.000-07:00

I've spent my last month in South Asia traveling and photographing through the Sunderbans in Bangladesh, working on a story and multimedia piece about tigers. It should be put together in the next 2 or 3 months. Here are some snapshots from the trip in the meantime.

Tigers attack from behind so we bought Halloween masks in Dhaka before taking off

Fresh honey from the hive.

Staring.

More staring.

After the rain.

There are baby goats everywhere.

You can't be a real photojournalist without a Leica, Afgan scarf and hat.

"I forgot that I might see, so many beautiful things. I forgot that I might need, to find out what life could bring."

2010-05-07T15:08:00.001-07:00

Since leaving and returning to Bangladesh this past month, I've just been relaxing, traveling, exploring, seeing, learning, shooting and experiencing the 'backpacker' part of my trip.
I'm leaving Dhaka for a project in the Sunderbans next week, but the other night I had the privilege of attending an illegal wedding in Old Dhaka.

The illegal wedding of Tamzid takes place May 1, 2010 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Most of Tamzids family disowned him after learning he was gay.
Male same-sex unions are criminalized in Bangladesh and the punishment include fines and imprisonment of up to ten years. The gay community is generally underground and heavily stigmatized. No hate crime laws exist to address crimes motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity bias.

On-going project..

2010-04-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

Rohingya refugees live at an unregistered refugee camp at Kutupalong near Cox's Bazar, a southern coastal district about 300 kilometers south of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya ethnic group have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in neighboring Myanmar only find themselves trapped in international limbo.

As Muslims, they were unwanted in Buddhist Myanmar and as foreigners, they are unwanted in Muslim Bangladesh.

Toxic Fashion

2010-04-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

Laborers work at a sandblasting plant outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Manual sandblasting was recently banned in Turkey after it was discovered that it led to 40 deaths. Without the use of proper face protection, manual sandblasting can lead to silicosis by the inhalation of the silica dust in sand.

Manual sandblasting has long been banned many European countries and the United States. The textile industry is Bangladesh's number one export earner and employs over 2.2 million workers.

Please see the full take here

2010-03-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this post for the third time, from Dhaka, Bangaldesh. Everytime I finish uploading pictures the power goes out and I have to start all over again.

It's been a long time since I posted. After Jharia I stopped for few days in New Delhi to relax and regroup, then took a week to travel to Cox's Bazar, the tip of Bangladesh that borders Myanmar, stopping along the way in Calcutta and Dhaka. I started to shoot a project for a few days and then was called to Chittagong to work on something else.

I'm feeling a little burned out from all the goingoinggoing, train bus train boat bus boat, but I'm loving this country. In India the first question I am asked on the street is, "are you single?" here in Bangladesh it's "what do you do? what is your degree?". For all the poverty that exists here, it's clear that the people want to work harder for something more. There are billboards up everywhere, even in the most rural places I've been, advertisting for schools, universities, tutoring, all kinds of education. There are over 17 daily newspapers in this tiny country. The friendness and hospitality of the people (especially coming from New York City) caught me off guard and is something I've never experienced anywhere else. I arrived at the bus station in Dhaka to find everything written in Bengali, wandered around looking lost, and a wonderful little family plucked my ticket out of my hand, directed me to the bus and even helped me book a room a hotel when we arrived.

Here are a just a few snapshots from the past weeks, since I'm still mid-shoot on two different projects. A sort of 'state fair' in Chittagong, my first England vs Bangladesh cricket match, and a little traffic in Dhaka.

2010-02-27T04:21:00.000-08:00

"The sun rises over Bokahapadi Village in Jharia, Jharrkhand, India, February 18, 2010. Women and children as young as 5 years old scavenge daily at the open and underground mines Jharia. The coal fields here were once used by companies, but then abandoned. The coal was exposed to the atmosphere, ignited, and underground fires spread across the towns. Locals in Jharia live over dozens of these underground coal fires that pump out toxic fumes and form fire pits that have led to several deaths and collapsed homes. They work alongside the fires, breathing fumes for up to 9 hours a day. The coal they collect earns them around $1 a day at the local markets. With coal scavengering a primary source of income for many residents, a proposed government relocation of residents is being met with resistance. Coal supplies 70% of India’s energy and the largest concentration of the country’s coal fields are in Jharrkhand."

Please view the entire project here

2010-02-11T05:15:00.000-08:00

I spent a total of 11 hours on the train to and from Calcutta yesterday to get permission to shoot for a project I'm working on in Dhanbad, only to get all the way there and find out the director I needed to speak with wasn't in. It's been three weeks here in India now and I'm trying to keep a zen and open mind, but there are a few things to get used to, like Indian bathrooms, hygiene, trains, queues (or lack thereof), being constantly stared at and followed around by stunned people and children when I shoot. Every once and a while I find my New York anger boiling up but it's clear that my western middle class frame of mind simply won't work for me here. For all my bitching I have to give credit, just when I feel ready to throw up my hands in frustration something seems to pop up and give me exactly what I need.

More Kumbh Mela

2010-01-31T03:08:00.000-08:00

'Livin' my life like it's golden'

2010-01-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

I was feeling a little down today after having both cameras break (thankfully I can still shoot with one if I give it a good smack every few minutes) and getting harassed by an overly suspicious lady cop yesterday; so today I decided to take the day off, sleep in, and wander around town doing the tourist thing.

This place is breathtaking. I've been waking up before dawn every morning and walking through the fog for nearly a half mile to the main Ghats and watching the faithful bathe in the icy waters of the Ganges as the sun rises, it's clear that this is an incredibly important, spiritual experience for them.

Maybe having my 5D's die was a blessing in disguise; a sign telling me to ditch the cameras for a while and have a look around. Just the other day, I spoke with a photojournalist from France that I met here who was doing just that: putting down his cameras for a few months at a time to just enjoy traveling the world. We agreed that while you're busy shooting behind the lens, it's far too easy to get caught up in taking the right shots and forget to experience what's around you.

This break from New York is something I've needed for a while. Working for a daily newspaper every day in the city, I got caught up in the routine of my assignments, becoming just another member of the hustle and bustle and dizzying blur of trying to keep up as a working professional within the city. Eventually, I burned myself out, and had forgot why I got into this profession in the first place. Now, halfway across the world at the base of the Himalayas, I think I am finally starting to remember.

Another morning in Haridwar

2010-01-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

The River Ganges is seen during the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious festival in the world, in Haridwar, India, January 26, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of devotees will take a dip in the icy waters of the Ganges river in one of northern India's holiest cities on Saturday, January 30, during the monthslong Hindu festival. It is expected to attract more than 10 million people.

Haridwar

2010-01-24T23:28:00.000-08:00

Got up at dawn again to chase some light.

Sunrise in Haridwar

2010-01-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

3 hours in Rishikesh

2010-01-23T21:56:00.000-08:00

My 4 hour bus ride from Delhi to Haridwar turned into 14 hours after a miscommunication with the bus driver. I woke up after driving all night through the fog in Rishikesh, 25 kilometers and a hour past Haridwar, so while all the Indian tourists got out and toured the temples I wandered around town a bit. It was the most beautiful, peaceful place I've been in a long time.

Dizzy in Delhi

2010-01-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

Pictures from my first day in India.

2010-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

Archbishop Dolan in New York January 17, 2010.

2009-12-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

A man shoots golf at the Chelsea Pier Driving Range in New York City Saturday, December 12, 2009.

Recent

2009-11-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

My roomate, Patrick van Rosendaal poses for a portrait outside our apartment in Manhattan.

Abeir and Beida pose for a portrait with Abeir's two sons on the roof of their Bronx apartment. After both their husbands were killed by the Taliban in Iraq, they started receiving death threats and came to New York under refugee status.
For security reasons, they asked that their identity not be revealed in this photo.

Recent

2009-10-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

I stuck reporter Matt Nestel in some nice afternoon light in Easton, Pennsylvania this weekend.

Reporter Austin Fenner enjoys a cigar in Bristol, Connecticut

This was a fun little little photo booth session I had with some contestants in the cat show at the Javits Center in New York a few weeks ago. Interesting group to say the least.

2009-09-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

G-20 protests in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

"You're sexy, you're cute! Take off that riot suit!"

2009-09-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

G20 protests in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two long days and nights of tear gas, rubber bullets, riot cops and anarchists.

2009-09-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

Days leading up to the G20 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Joan Didion

2009-09-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

This was a required text from freshman year English with Kwame Heshimu at Pratt. It stuck in my mind for a long time and I finally tracked it down online the other day.

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and and ten—
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again—
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candlelight.

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was. When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was. Some time later there was a song in the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went “but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me,” and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.

Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco, but because I am talking about myself I am talking here about New York. That first night I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline, but all I could see were the wastes of Queens and big signs that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL THIS LANE and then a flood of summer rain (even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain), and for the next three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those years was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

---

In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later, but perhaps you will see that as we go along. Part of what I want to tell you is what it is like to be young in New York, how six months can become eight years with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve, for that is how those years appear to me now, in a long sequence of sentimental dissolves and old-fashioned trick shots—the Seagram Building fountains dissolve into snowflakes, I enter a revolving door at twenty and come out a good deal older, and on a different street. But most particularly I want to explain to you, and in the process perhaps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city only for the very young.

I remember once, one cold bright December evening in New York, suggesting a friend who complained of having been around too long that he come with me to a party where there would be, I assured him with the bright resourcefulness of twenty-three, “new faces.” He laughed literally until he choked, and I had to roll down the taxi window and hit him on the back. “New faces,” he said finally, “don’t tell me about new faces.” It seemed that the last time he had gone to a party where he had been promised “new faces,” there had been fifteen people in the room, and he had already spelt with five of the women and owed money to all but two of the men. I laughed with him, but the first snow had just begun to fall and the big Christmas trees glittered yellow and white as far as I could see up Park Avenue and I had a new dress and it would be a long while before I would come to understand the particular moral of the story.

It would be a long while because, quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month. I was making only $65 or $70 then a week then (“Put yourself in Hattie Carnegie’s hands,” I was advised without the slightest trace of irony by an editor of the magazine for which I worked), so little money that some weeks I had to charge food at Bloomingdale’s gourmet shop in order to eat, a fact which went unmentioned in the letters I wrote to California. I never told my father that I needed money because then he would have sent it, and I would never know if I could do it by myself. At that time making a living seemed a game to me, with arbitrary but quite inflexible rules. And except on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks working in clean kitchens and and imagine women lighting candles on the floor above and beautiful children being bathed on the floor above that—except on nights like those, I never felt poor; I had the feeling that if I needed money I could always get it. I could write a syndicated column for teenagers under the name “Debbi Lynn” or I could smuggle gold into India or I could become a $100 call girl, and none of would matter.

Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about. I could go to a party and meet someone who called himself Mr. Emotional Appeal and ran The Emotional Appeal Institute or Tina Onassis Blandford or a Florida cracker who was then a regular on what the called “the Big C,” the Southampton-El Morocco circuit (“I’m well connected on the Big C, honey,” he would tell me over collard greens on his vast borrowed terrace), or the widow of the celery king of the Harlem market or a piano salesman from Bonne Terre, Missouri, or someone who had already made and list two fortunes in Midland, Texas. I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count.

You see I was in a curious position in New York: it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there. In my imagination I was always there for just another few months, just until Christmas or Easter or the first warm day in May. For that reason I was most comfortable with the company of Southerners. They seemed to be in New York as I was, on some indefinitely extended leave from wherever they belonged, disciplined to consider the future, temporary exiles who always knew when the flights left for New Orleans or Memphis or Richmond or, in my case, California. Someone who lives with a plane schedule in the drawer lives on a slightly different calendar. Christmas, for example, was a difficult season. Other people could take it in stride, going to Stowe or going abroad or going for the day to their mothers’ places in Connecticut; those of us who believed that we lived somewhere else would spend it making and canceling airline reservations, waiting for weatherbound flights as if for the last plane out of Lisbon in 1940, and finally comforting one another, those of us who were left, with oranges and mementos and smoked-oyster stuffings of childhood, gathering close, colonials in a far country.

Which is precisely what we were. I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York, the idea of New York, means to those of us who came out of the West and the South. To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always has an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O. Schwarz and being fitted for shoes at Best’s and then waiting under the Biltmore clock and dancing to Lester Lanin, New York is just a city, albeit the city, a plausible place for people to live, But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions (“Money,” and “High Fashion,” and “The Hucksters”), New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of “living” there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not “live” at Xanadu.

In fact it was difficult in the extreme for me to understand those young women for whom New York was not simply an ephemeral Estoril but a real place, girls who bought toasters and installed new cabinets in their apartments and committed themselves to some reasonable furniture. I never bought any furniture in New York. For a year or so I lived in other people’s apartments; after that I lived in the Nineties in an apartment furnished entirely with things taken from storage by a friend whose wife had moved away. And when I left the apartment in the Nineties (that was when I was leaving everything, when it was all breaking up) I left everything in it, even my winter clothes and the map of Sacramento County I had hung on the bedroom wall to remind me who I was, and I moved into a monastic four-room floor-through on Seventy-fifth Street. “Monastic” is perhaps misleading here, implying some chic severity; until after I was married and my husband moved some furniture in, there was nothing at all in those four rooms except a cheap double mattress and box springs, ordered by telephone the day I decided to move, and two French garden chairs lent me by a friend who imported them. (It strikes me now that the people I knew in New York all had curious and self-defeating sidelines. They imported garden chairs which did not sell very well at Hammacher Schlemmer or they tried to market hair staighteners in Harlem or they ghosted exposés of Murder Incorporated for Sunday supplements. I think that perhaps none of us was very serious, engagé only about our most private lives.)

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms. That was the year, my twenty-eight, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it.

---

That is what it was all about, wasn’t it? Promises? Now when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited. For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then L’Air du Temps, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day. Nor can I smell Henri Bendel jasmine soap without falling back into the past, or the particular mixture of spices used for boiling crabs. There were barrels of crab boil in a Czech place in the Eighties where I once shopped. Smells, of course, are notorious memory stimuli, but there are other things which affect me the same way. Blue-and-white striped sheets. Vermouth cassis. Some faded nightgowns which were new in 1959 or 1960, and some chiffon scarves I bought about the same time.

I suppose that a lot of us who have been very young in New York have the same scenes in our home screens. I remember sitting in a lot of apartments with a slight headache about five o’clock in the morning. I had a friend who could not sleep, and he knew a few other people who had the same trouble, and we would watch the sky lighten and have a last drink with no ice and then go home in the early morning, when the streets were clean and wet (had it rained in the night? we never knew) and the few cruising taxis still had their headlights on and the only color was the red and green of traffic signals. The White Rose bars opened very early in the morning; I recall waiting in one of them to watch an astronaut go into space, waiting so long that at the moment it actually happened I had my eyes not on the television screen but on a cockroach on the tile floor. I liked the bleak branches above Washington Square at dawn, and the monochromatic flatness of Second Avenue, the fire escapes and the grilled storefronts peculiar and empty in their perspective.

It is relatively hard to fight at six-thirty or seven in the morning, without any sleep, which was perhaps one reason why we stayed up all night, and it seemed to me a pleasant time of day. The windows were shuttered in that apartment in the Nineties and I could sleep for a few hours and then go to work. I could work the on two or three hours’ sleep and a container of coffee from Chock Full O’ Nuts. I liked going to work, liked the soothing and satisfactory rhythm of getting out a magazine, liked the orderly progression of four-color closings and two-color closings and black-and-white closings and then The Product, no abstraction but something which looked effortlessly glossy and could be picked up on a newsstand and weighed in the hand. I liked all the minutiae of proofs and layouts, liked working late on the nights the magazines went to press, sitting and reading Variety and waiting for the copy desk to call. From my office, I could look across town to the weather signal on the Mutual of New York Building and the lights that alternately spelled TIME and LIFE above Rockeffeler Plaza; that pleased me obscurely, and so did walking uptown in the mauve eight o’clocks of early summer evenings and looking at things, Lowestoft tureens in Fifty-seventh Street windows, people in evening clothes trying to get taxis, the trees just coming into full leaf, the lambent air, all the sweet promises of money and summer.

Some years passed, but I still did not lose that sense of wonder about New York. I began to cherish the loneliness of it, the sense that at any given time no one need know where I was or what I was doing. I liked walking, from the East River over to the Hudson and back on brisk days, down around the Village on warm days. A friend would leave me the key to her apartment in the West Village when she was out of town, and sometimes I would just move down there, because by that time the telephone was beginning to bother me (the canker, you see, was already in the rose) and not many people had that number. I remember one day when someone who did have the West Village number came to pick me up for lunch there, and we both had hangovers, and I cut my finger opening him a beer and burst into tears, and we walked to a Spanish restaurant and drank bloody Marys and gazpacho until we felt better. I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world.

And even that late in the game I still liked going to parties, all parties, bad parties, Saturday-afternoon parties given by recently married couples who lived in Stuyvesant Town, West Side parties given by unpublished or failed writers who served cheap red wine and talked about going to Guatalajara, Village parties where all the guests worked for advertising agencies and voted for Reform Democrats, press parties at Sardi’s, the worst kind of parties. You will have perceived by now that I was not one to profit by the experience of others, that it was a very long time indeed before I stopped believing in new faces and began to understand the lesson in that story, which was that it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the Fair.

---

I could not tell you when I began to understand that. All I know is that it was very bad when I was twenty-eight. Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no longer listen. I could no longer sit in little bars near Grand Central and listen to someone complaining of his wife’s inability to cope with the help while he missed another train to Connecticut. I no longer had any interest in hearing about the advances other people had received from their publishers, about plays which were having second-act trouble in Philadelphia, or about people I would like very much if only I would come out and meet them. I had already met them, always. There were certain parts of the city which I had to avoid. I could not bear upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings (this was a particularly inconvenient aversion, since I then lived just fifty or sixty feet east of Madison), because I would see women walking Yorkshire terriers and shopping at Gristede’s, and some Veblenesque gorge would rise in my throat. I could not go to Times Square in the afternoon, or to the New York Public Library for any reason whatsoever. One day I could not go into a Schrafft’s; the next it would be the Bonwit Teller.

I hurt the people I cared about, and insulted those I did not. I cut myself off from the one person who was closer to me than any other. I cried until I was not even aware when I was crying and when I was not, I cried in elevators and in taxis and in Chinese laundries, and when I went to the doctor, he said only that I seemed to be depressed, and that I should see a “specialist.” He wrote down a psychiatrist’s name and address for me, but I did not go.

Instead I got married, which as it turned out was a very good thing to do but badly timed, since I still could not walk on upper Madison Avenue in the mornings and still could not talk to people and still cried in Chinese laundries. I had never before understood what “despair” meant, and I am not sure that I understand now, but I understood that year. Of course I could not work. I could not even get dinner with any degree of certainty, and I would sit in the apartment on Seventy-fifth Street paralyzed until my husband would call from his office and say gently that I did not have to get dinner, that I could meet him at Michael’s Pub or at Toots Shor’s or at Sardi’s East. And then one morning in April (we had been married in January) he called and told me that he wanted to get out of New York for a while, that he would take a six-month leave of absence, that we would go somewhere.

It was three years ago he told me that, and we have lived in Los Angeles since. Many of the people we knew in New York think this a curious aberration, and in fact tell us so. There is no possible, no adequate answer to that, and so we give certain stock answers, the answers everyone gives. I talk about how difficult it would be for us to “afford” to live in New York right now, about how much “space” we need, All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore. The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles “the Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.

[1967]

2009-09-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Alberto Rottura stands for a portrait at Alberta Del Montecchi hair salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan Friday, September 18, 2009. Rotture has been cutting hair for a living since he was a teenager in the village of Acquaro, in southern Italy. Since coming to New York in 1960, his regular clients include Mayor Bloomberg, public advocate Betsy Gotbaum, writer Tom Wolfe, and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (until he became tangled in an escort scandal and never returned).

2009-09-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

Lloyd Constantine is photographed in his office at Constantine | Cannon.

Constantine was, and is, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's close friend and "right hand man". They met in 1982, when he worked for the state attorney general and the governor-to-be was an office intern. For about twenty years Constantine's professional life had been a class-action lawsuit with Visa and MasterCard, and Eliot Spitzer's political career. When Spitzer became governor Constantine gave up his practice and focused on Spitzers career, with dreams of reforming state government before moving on to the White House.

Constantine's new book, Priceless, detailing the Visa MasterCard case will be released next month. His latest book "Journal of the Plague Year.", about Eliot Spitzer and the scandal that rocked New York is due for release in April.

2009-09-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ellis Island, 9/16/09

2009-09-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at the airport in Raleigh, North Carolina waiting for my flight back to New York with about 3 hours to kill before my plane boards.
I just put together a few photos from a stakeout earlier this week. During 9 hours on the sidewalk the reporter acted out "The stages of a New York stakeout".
See if you can guess which is which.

Remembering Ted

2009-08-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Boston August 2009

40 years later

2009-08-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

I've always been drawn to the 60s generation. Maybe it was growing up in the Britney Spears, MTV, TMZ, Paris Hilton era that caused me to admire a generation that burned their bras, marched on Washington, ended a war and gave a crap about the injustices of their time. Woodstock seemed like the climax of that period and I've always thought it was a shame it took place almost 20 years before I was born. So when a friend mentioned over drinks that the 40th anniversary was happening I immediately rented a car and drove up.

A few of those "I can't believe I get paid for this" days that make all the "why the hell am I doing this" days worth it.

Graphic from www.washingtonpost.com

"But most were here for something more. They came to touch, even briefly, an earlier moment when words like love and peace didn't sound so much like cliches, and togetherness meant more than linking up through a social networking site.

"The war was going on," she said. "It was just a time of taking a break from the war and celebrating happiness."

And that is precisely the legacy that Grandpa Woodstock wants to impart. "The music was good -- don't get me wrong," he said. "But Woodstock was a peace movement." "

You can read more of the article by Keith B. Richburg here

2009-08-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

A friend stole my camera. Thought this was kind of funny. I hate being on the other side of the lens.

2009-07-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

Aruba

June in New York

2009-07-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

GM at bankruptcy court, Mariah Carey films "Obsessed" at the Plaza, Michael Jackson memorial in Harlem

2009-07-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

Manhattan Danceport Championships, Marriott, Brooklyn, New York, July 4, 2009

2009-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Republic Brooklyn at Jungle, 06/13/09

2009-06-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Puerto Rican Day Parade, New York, 06/14/09

2009-06-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

Gallery show in DUMBO, Brooklyn, 6/4/09

2009-05-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

Rev. Al Sharpton speaks at National Action Network in the Harlem on Saturday, May 30, 2009, demanding an investigation of the shooting on Thursday in which police officer Omar J. Edwards was shot to death by a fellow officer.

2009-05-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election 18 individuals
ran for the nation's highest office. Many of who's campaign's started
and ended in Iowa. Our photographic coverage began in the summer of
2007 when the five of us moved to Iowa's capital of Des Moines. Nearly
all of the candidates both Republican and Democratic set up offices,
had staff on the ground, or had visited the state in their quest to
become president, and we covered all 18 candidates from their start to
their finish. We set out to search for images that were often
overlooked. To that end we began www.thestumpinggrounds.com to not only
focus on the candidates, but the faces in the crowds, the hangers on,
the staffers, the rallies, and the just plain odd. We posted a new
photo for each day of the election on the site starting in June 2007
and up until election night. After the Iowa Primary we traveled to many
other states like New Hampshire, South Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin etc.,
often as a group, still working towards the ultimate goal of covering
the entire election together. In the end we were able to finish the
election just as we began, as a small group of photojournalists,
working, traveling and living together, witnesses to a historic chapter
in our country's history. Beginning in Iowa, through Chicago on
election night and finally Washington D.C. during the inauguration, we
covered it all and achieved our goal.

For those of you who will be in NYC June 4th, please join us in Dumbo
at Pochron Studios for The Stumping Grounds one night only gallery show.

2009-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Portraits from Bike Week 2009 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Bike week is 7 days of southern culture, whiskey, burnt rubber and girls gone wild.

2009-05-12T12:53:00.001-07:00

Fort Collins, Colorado, 05/11/09

2009-05-08T21:56:00.000-07:00

Fort Collins, Colorado, 05/08/09

2009-05-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, participates in a conversation with Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at The Tibet Fund Town Hall in New York, May 3, 2009. The Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk who is seen as a figure of moral authority in much of the world, was on a three-day visit to New York. US President Barack Obama's top Asia advisor recently said China should see the Dalai Lama as "part of the solution" on Tibet instead of trying to isolate him.

2009-05-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

People cross Times Square in the rain in New York, May 03, 2009.

By Kevin Moloney

2009-04-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

"A letter written to my students of the time, a couple weeks after the Columbine shootings:

May 4, 1999

Dear students,

Two weeks ago a horde descended upon Clement Park to cover the massacre at Columbine High School. There bereaved families and students found themselves face-to-face with more camera operators than I have seen anywhere, and that collision created a perfect laboratory for us to look at ourselves, the job we do and how the public reacts to our work.

Today was an interesting day for it seems to be the end of the initial media blitz. Monday tornadoes ravaged Oklahoma, killing an estimated 45 people. Off to the next disaster raced most of the out-of-towners, leaving Clement park to the curious visitors and shocked citizens that flock there daily.

Up through yesterday the public’s perception of the media had been steadily sliding downhill. The situations I’ll describe here are not the only reasons for the public disgust and distrust of the media. We’ve been building up public exhaustion with our behavior for years. The Columbine massacre just handily lays it all out before us.

The day this tragedy happened I raced out the door like all the other journalists in town and what I encountered near the scene of the shooting shook me. I spent that afternoon at an elementary school near Columbine where worried parents congregated in wait for their children. Their faces were a terrible sight. The radio and TV were reporting up to 25 dead, making the odds that their children had been injured or killed very real.

That’s a tough situation to photograph. Standing near someone that horrified and frightened makes my camera weigh a thousand pounds. People reacted to me in varying ways — some not noticing me at all, others seeming to understand why I was there. I was also scolded by one man who said, “get that camera out of my face.”

I waited a minute for him to cool down, and apologized to him.

Initially the media who were there acted as part the scene. I loaned my cell phone out to at least five parents or grandparents. I was constantly asked for updates, and I gave as much information as I could as graciously as possible. I handed out business cards, encouraging anyone to call if they had any questions at all. Later I did get a call from a pair of parents who when I last saw them on that day still hadn’t found their twin children. They thanked me for my concern and help at the scene, and happily told me their kids were safe.

But as the numbers of photographers increased, the separation between the subjects and the journalists grew. Crying children hid behind their friends and families. A few cursed the cameras. More photographers arrived, some greeting each other with back slaps and smiles. Some bragged about the “great pictures” they had gotten.

I stood and watched with the worried families. How callous that seems to someone in trouble — to see the media react to it as if it were just another excuse to exploit misery for ratings and contests and profit.

I know both sides of that story, though. I think the photographers there who did act that way were just blocking out the horror of the situation in a convenient way. Many of us do that after a few too many troubling scenes. We make the camera a block against reality and shoot pictures as if it were all a play laid out for us to photograph.

We in the media desperately need to realize that our subjects are watching us, too. We must behave in a sensitive manner around the grief-stricken. We need to show that we care and that we do this job because the public cares. We must be ambassadors.

At too many funerals I have seen photographers and videographers arrive in shorts and T-shirts as if they were at a baseball game. Being behind a camera does not mean we are separate from the scene. On the contrary, big equipment and tripods make us stand out like nothing else can.

Please be professionals. Dress for the situation. Wear a tie. Don’t march around with cigarettes dangling from your lips, or worse yet, with a huge dip of Skoal under your lip. If we expect the respect of our subjects, our viewers, and the public that grants us the rights on which we operate, we must be respectful to them.

Please never forget as you enter the working world of journalism that it is the First Amendment under which we operate. But free speech is not a right held too dear by much of the public. In their view, free speech is fine as long as it doesn’t speak badly about them. Free speech is dandy unless they find it offensive in any way.

The only example we need to see is the persistent attempts at a constitutional amendment against flag burning. Why do politicians brandish that idea about so often even if they don’t believe it would be constitutional? Because the public finds the burning of a flag deeply offensive even if it is free speech.

We must deal with our subjects honestly and fairly. We cannot be lazy with the facts. We must maintain the trust of the public we serve. As a journalist I am as afraid of suddenly being the subject of a news story (again) as I am afraid of an IRS audit. That isn’t because I have anything to hide or be ashamed of. Based on experiences on both sides of the act of journalism, I fear that the truth would not be properly portrayed. I fear that I would be a sound bite or quote delivered in a careless context.

On the second day of coverage of the Columbine story it was evident the community was already tired of the growing horde of journalists. At memorial services bands of parishioners began to form human walls even though the media were still being remarkably well-behaved at that point. The consequences of our voraciousness were becoming evident.

At Clement park, many mourners and groups of students were outnumbered by the media everywhere they went. The week wore on and anyone with any shaky connection to the event had been telephoned relentlessly, badgered at the door or offered large sums of money to appear on questionable TV shows.

I’ve heard of two disturbing incidents (surely there are more) — one in which one photographer laid on the ground in the middle of a huddle of crying Columbine students, blasting up at their bowed heads with a flash. In another tale, a photographer chases a disturbed, crying subject down the street, blasting away with a camera.

What must be the public perception of this behavior? Do they see our actions in the field as separate from the final product they see on the TV screen or in print? I think yes. Clement park is a wondrous, sprawling example of that. It is the media that has drawn all those people to send offerings from across the country, or to bring their children to lay flowers or teddy bears on the ever-expanding mounds.

The satellite trucks have made the area the epicenter of grief. We draw them with our images, but they are taken aback when our cameras flash in their tearing eyes. To the public our product is separate from our work.

It is unfortunate that the public misunderstands the concept of privacy. I have long wished that every citizen understood that when they are in a public place they don’t have “privacy.” But the public feels that the right to privacy is something more akin to “the right to be left alone.” This is the only way I can explain why people would flock to a place surrounded by satellite trucks to grieve, and be angry when a camera pops up in front of them.

Saturday an estimated 7,000 people crowded the west steps of the state capitol to protest the NRA’s annual meeting in Denver. Fewer journalists were on hand to cover the event, already more than a week after the shooting. A grieving Columbine father spoke, followed by a family who had lost a son in a shooting. During one father’s speech a counterprotestor was pushed to the ground in a scuffle not far the podium. Most of the photojournalists, all doing their job by capturing a potentially explosive situation, turned away for a few seconds to photograph police dragging the counterprotestor away.

The speaker bemoaned the press for “scrambling to photograph that,” rather than pay attention to him. The crowd erupted in a cheer that gave me a chill. None of the photographers had done anything less than their job in that case, but the giant crowd showed immediately how uncomfortable they were with our actions in general. And surely most of the crowd realizes that without media coverage of the rally, it would have no effect beyond their ranks. They needed us there.

Monday the students of Columbine High returned to classes at a nearby school. As Chatfield students left to make way for the Columbine kids, they passed the small row of journalists reporting from across the street. Insults were hurled from car windows by students who hadn’t even been involved in the incident. A small army of parents stood on the school’s side of the road to chase away any journalists who wished to cross. Another group gave out fliers to Columbine students advising them of their “rights with the press.”

We are shooting ourselves in the foot with our own behavior. Competition for ratings, or circulation, or publication fees makes many journalists forget about the consequences of their actions. Sensationalist coverage breeds more disgust, reduces the public trust and hurts us again.

A touching moment happens in a park full of journalists and the dog pile begins. A Current Affair makes more money when people watch its sensational coverage, and other TV outlets feel the need to follow suit in pursuit of profit. Freelance photographers trip over each other chasing tears, stake out offenders’ homes, and badger neighbors only on the odd chance that they’ll make a few extra bucks.

This profession is not about money nor about winning contests. Journalism is about telling stories — carefully and professionally. If what you do in journalism ever becomes about money, find another career that will make more money for you. If what you do in journalism ever becomes getting a picture or quote regardless of the effects on the innocent, find another career where you’re less likely to hurt someone.

This is not about money.

This is not about winning contests.

Causing pain or anger in the undeserving is not worth a picture or a sound bite with a news life of one day or less. Angering Pol Pot by brashly making a picture is one thing, angering and aggravating the innocent is another.

In the eyes of the media Columbine is now an old story. There are 45 new victims to cover in another state thanks to Mother Nature. Those journalists have raced off to that story leaving all the baggage of this one behind them, yet the families of the victims, their friends and classmates will be stuck with this story for the rest of their lives.

Please, as you enter the working world, think about what your subjects are seeing in you, and what they will remember about their experience with you after the flood lights have moved on. We need the support of the public to do our jobs well. We need the support of the public to guard our first amendment rights.

Journalism is a profession. Any field associated with that term bears a responsibility to the public — the medical profession, the legal profession, the education profession. From time to time we have the responsibility to expose the guilty with all our investigative talents. But we also have the responsibility to treat the innocent fairly and with careful, respectful consideration.

Let’s guard our professionalism. Know where that line falls. "

http://blog.kevinmoloney.com/

2009-04-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've been shooting a lot lately, but not much that I can post. I ran around Jersey yesterday covering the evacuations related to the plane scare. This is a snap from the boat ride back to the city. It was nice to get out of the city for an afternoon, even if it was just New Jersey.

2009-04-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

Upstate, March 2009

2009-04-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich speaks at a protest against US President Barack Obama, stage a protest in City Hall Park, New York. Critics of President Barack Obama marked national tax day Wednesday with "tea party" protests throughout the country.

2009-04-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Jewish worshipers participate in the special 'Blessing of the Sun' prayer, in New York City, Wednesday, April 8, 2009. Jews around the world observed a ritual Wednesday morning performed only once every 28-years, saying their morning prayers under the open sky in the 'blessing of the sun', called the Birkat Hachamah.

2009-04-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Mayor Bloomberg, 03/05/09, NYC

You know it's spring...

2009-03-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

when Tye and I can be found sipping Margaritas in the West Village on a lazy Saturday afternoon..

Nothing beats spring in the city.

2009-03-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

2009-03-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Fire at M&T bank, Manhattan, New York, 03/23/09

2009-03-04T11:29:00.001-08:00

Swearing in ceremony of 300 new correction officers, Brooklyn, 03/04/09

2009-03-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

Wedding at the Empire State Building, February 14, 2009

2009-03-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

Shopping for wedding dresses at Bridal Garden, February 26, 2009

2009-03-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

Bollywood Dance Class, February 20, 2009

2009-02-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

Photo-booth sessions from Saturday night at Republic Brooklyn, www.RepublicBrooklyn.com

2009-02-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to all the members of Republic Brooklyn whose hard work made last night such a success!!!!

Please check out all the photos from the night at www.RepublicBrooklyn.com

2009-02-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

DIGITAL RITUALS in the FOURTH DIMENSION

Curated by Jason Voegele & Lauren Culbreth

Produced by REPUBLIC*

@

JUNGLE

286 Meserole at the corner or Waterbury in Brooklyn, NY

JUNGLE is two blocks from the MONTROSE stop on the L train

FEBRUARY 21, 2009

8pm - Midnight

After party from 12 to 2am

After After Party form 2am to 4am

http://www.republicbrooklyn.com

As the tools artists use to more accurately represent the fruits of their imagination continue to evolve, the deep psychological drive to interpret the world in a visual symbolic language is as rooted in the same unanswerable wonder at the great mysteries of life as it has ever been. The artist has always been a sort of shaman negotiating these unfamiliar waters and the shaman has always been the activator of ritual mystery objects and images. In doing so he has always been the intermediary, negotiating a thinly veiled differentiation between the great mysteries of life and our daily routine.

For these artists/shamans the tools of our creative expression have never been more powerful and have never before possessed so much potential to interrupt the linear history of the art world in such a profound and fundamental way. As technology ages, artists and scientists are developing new work with more diversity and skill than ever before. New technology has delivered new ways of manipulating and executing ingenious representations of those mythically complex personal and archetypal expressions. Not too long ago, in the analogue world, the future seemed so far away. Today as we rocket through the 21st century there is an overwhelming sense in the commercial world and in our home and studio life that the future is now. On February 21, 2009 REPUBLIC in conjunction with the epic new show space JUNGLE will bring it to you. In the spirit of a post Paik and prime time Viola world, DIGITAL RITUALS; New Art in the Fourth Dimension is an exhibition of digital projections, audio performance, interactive sculpture and photography that attempts to stroke your sense of wonder.

Artists include, Laura Splan, Mey Veral, Peter Mackie, Tara Hrabowsky, Lucia Jeeson Lee, Jasin Cadic, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Drew Anderson, Joel Erland, Kate Kaman, Cathleen Grado, Brian Shaw, The Brooklyn Art Collective and more with performances by Bart Woodstrup & Alex Chechile, Public School & Panopticon.

REPUBLIC is a New York based community of autonomous individuals and arts organizations who have come together to transcend the sum of our parts.

JUNGLE is a 5,500 square foot epic show space capable of accommodating the measure of your imagination. Many thanks to Edu Mussi.

DIGITAL RITUALS; New Art in the Fourth Dimension, curated by Jason Voegele and Lauren Culbreth opens February 21, 2009 from 7:30 to midnight at JUNGLE, 286 Meserole St. in Brooklyn, NY just two blocks from the Montrose stop on the L train.

$10 at the door. Afterparty from 12 - 2am with special guest DJ. After afterparty from 2am to 4am with more special guests.

For further information contact Jason Voegele 917. 478. 7513 or by email at info@republicbrooklyn.com

2009-02-15T21:41:00.000-08:00

Carlos Campos, 02/15/09

2009-02-15T20:21:00.000-08:00

Patrik Rzepski, 02/13/09

My favorite holiday,

2009-02-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

Fashion Week.

Even though I haven't been assigned to cover the shows this year, I managed to shoot a couple on my day off yesterday. What would a February be without Fashion Week?

Cushnie et Ochs, Patrik Rzepski, Form, NYC, 02/13/09

2009-02-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

Capoeira, Brooklyn, 02/08/09

2009-02-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

01/20/09 Tye Dow, NYC

2009-01-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

"A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness form the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.

Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with every one, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man's attention.

The wise man listened attentively to the boy's explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn't have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours.

'Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something.' said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. 'As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.'

The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.

'Well,' asked the wise man, 'did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?'

The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.

'Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,' said the wise man. 'You cannot trust a man if you don't know his house.'

Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.

"But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?' asked the wise man.

Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone.

"Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,' said the wisest of wise men. "The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.'

The shepherd said nothing. He had understood the story the old king had told him. A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep."

Just a passage from the book I'm reading, The Alchemist, that stuck with me.

2009-01-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

New Years in NYC's Chinatown

2009-01-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Fire at Mt. Sinai hospital, 01/21/09

101 posts

2009-01-21T08:18:00.000-08:00

A few snapshots I found yesterday while crossing the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges for the NY Post.

The space between

2009-01-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

August

January

2009-01-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem, 01/18/09

2009-01-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

Just a few things I've shot lately.
I started with the New York Post about a week and a half ago. It feels great to be back with steady work at a daily paper. I kind of missed running around the boroughs shooting the day to day features and press conferences. It makes you feel really connected to the city and gives you a chance to meet people you wouldn't otherwise, if not for the excuse of a camera. I almost forgot how much I love this job.

2009-01-11T16:01:00.000-08:00