Another photo essay dealing with place. Nostalgia, lament and hope for what might be the last working-class neighborhood in Manhattan. I hope to visit again, take a walk in the rain, and dig a little deeper. I feel I've just scratched the surface.
A few of these images were entered in DPC challenges and one received a coveted posthumous. I actually sat next the man, while he drank sangria, the night before capturing most of these photographs.
01/06/2016 - If memory serves, I believe Don only had one glass of sangria.
Nice writing Henry along with a set of effecting, down to earth shots. I'm amazed at how much they look like neighborhoods of the Williamsburg Bridge (Delancey St) where we were recently. I enjoyed Jin's cameo peeking from behind that umbrella.
Very impressive Henry. You've enmeshed a whole raft of emotion and memory along with a keen introspective eye in this essay. I can just feel the busy dampness and character of the scenes, great opportunities of individual human expression juxtaposed on what seems sometimes grimy cityscapes. I like the way your perspective deals with the way the inhabitants find ways to express their personality and make abstract social comment. You've made it about the human side coping with the architectural rather than the other way around. Excellent essay.
You make it sound like you were just sitting there watching me drink! I think we had more fun that... ;)
This is a beautiful essay, though I find it to be less about a place and more about your esthetic ability, your talent for creating a compelling composition or a juxtaposition. But that's okay with me. Your text explains the situation while your images say, look, it's beautiful here.
Nice to see this essay and the website where you've posted it. I plan on spending some time there poking around your earlier essays. It gives me a greater sense of who Insteps is. FWIW... Your challenge images are consistently among my highest scores.
Although I really lack confidence in my ability to critique an essay, (I am bit more comfortable with individual shots), I'll give this a shot.
The tile and cover photo caught my interest right away and I wasn't disappointed. I was also impressed with the imagery of your written text, it certainly amplified the effect of the images and worked to create a coherence that the images alone might not have created. I guess that's what essays are all about. And I don't mean to lessen the impact of the individual or set of photos, which would stand well alone, but the context is fascinating and onto something I had a clue about.
I really love the first image with a sense of busy-ness, congestion and dank environment. It is so well composed to take so many elements and present a sense of place and its separate but connected nature to the city. The second image really brings home the place you are exploring - growing up as a privileged white kid in southern California suburbs, it's hard to imagine anyone living like this. Also standing out to me is the powerful diptych of two women's faces (one on the poster and the one behind her umbrella). The two pigeons work well in sequence here, too.
The bright red fire escape contrasting with the drab grey of the day and the building works for me too... it brings my attention to the other similar splashes of color that you have sprinkled throughout. Perhaps my favorite image is the reflection of the bridge in a rain puddle, which you've also used to great effect in the banner link to the essay on your website.
In the end, I find this to be highly engaging and effective in providing context and a sense of place. It really is a complete work, despite my comments about individual images. It is what I would expect a well-crafted photo essay to be... a gestalt set of images (or images and text) that is "greater than the sum of its parts". [As an aside, I recently read on Wikipedia that the original quote from Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, "The whole is other than the sum of the parts" is often incorrectly translated as "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts"]
I just adore to see how people who do not live in NYC see it in all its complexity.
Your collection is a lament, yes, and also a longing for time to stay still in a place whose characteristic is a perpetual change.
I'd like to revisit the area with your photos in hand, to see what you saw but I know that it is impossible because things already changed.
Your photo essay is part of NYC history. And still, one my my favorite images is the one where you found as by strange coincidence a poster reminding you of the face of your beautiful Jin!
Wow, I love this. Real life, color, feeling, and sound. Just wonderful. It felt like the start to a novel. New York City is still a place on my bucket list. I've traveled all over but have yet to see that amazing city. (Hopefully next fall with my mom, fingers crossed.) But a week won't be enough time to see much past the lights and glitz that will undoubtedly grab this rural gal's attention. Thanks for this, a great visit to an interesting locale.
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