Category: event

July 4th BLM March

The Africa Center
Fifth Avenue and 109th St
Fifth Avenue, New York

Perhaps because it was the July 4th weekend yesterday’s march down 5th Avenue from the Duke Ellington Circle at 110th St was kind of anemic in terms of numbers but the 20+ who mustered made up for it in spirit.

Click any image to see them all enlarged.

Calling for Change

Last Saturday we joined a larger, longer march from 135th Street and St Nicholas Avenue across 135th Street and down Malcolm X Blvd, twisting a little bit to wind up at Frederick Douglass Circle. At the opening rally we heard spine-chilling stories from a couple of mothers of their experiences: one had called for help for her sick son only to see the responding police kill him; another was the mother of one of the Central Park Five who was incarcerated at 15 for 7 years for the rape of the Central Park jogger and was released as a registered sex offender. The horrors her family endured for decades before the actual perpetrator came forward are unimaginable. (Click any image to see them all enlarged.)

Mothers’ address
W 135th Street
The police consider…
… and protect the station
Sergio Larrain moment?
MLK Jr Blvd
West 110th Street
Frederick Douglass Circle

Hurray for Essential Workers

Upper West Side, New York

At 7 pm New Yorkers have been going to their windows and balconies to make noise and cheer all the essential workers, medical experts and personnel, grocers, delivery-people, etc, who make life under Covid bearable, possible, even. Most evenings I can’t see where all the noise is coming from (my wife and I joke that it’s applause for our cooking as we’re usually sitting down to dinner when it happens). From my rooftop eyrie a week and a half ago I got to see it from a whole new perspective.

Click any image to see them all enlarged.

Converso

Verso Books, Brooklyn, New York

My high school classmate, Richard Lachmann, at Verso Books on Feb 12th, expounding on his new book, First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship, a sweeping analysis of imperialism and hegemony in the capitalist age and the inexorable decline of American hegemony as our oligarchs extract what they can. I love the infinite regress of the screen behind them showing itself. Is this a metaphor for something?

Boss of the Grips

Word Up Community Bookshop, 165th St and Amsterdam Avenue, New York

Historian and friend, Eric K Washington, talking about the life and times of James Williams, as captured in his new book, “Boss of the Grips,” at Word Up Community Bookstore on December 5th. Well worth reading, the book tells the remarkable story of Williams but also relays black life in NYC starting in the late 19th century and extending to the middle of the 20th.

Act Up Lie In

Columbus Circle, New York

In mid-October Act Up, an HIV/AIDS activist organization, were demonstrating for the abolition of ICE, the US’s now notorious Immigration enforcement (or would it be more accurate to say their enforcement of non-immigration?) for the abuses inflicted upon would be immigrants with HIV.

King Crimson

Radio City Music Hall, New York

Went to see King Crimson with my old friend Joe in late September. they have a pretty strictly enforce policy of no photos till they’re done, at which point they start photographing each other and the audience, meaning no great photos of the band playing. And with the lights beaming into the audience at this point there’s massive flare to try and control…

Mother and Son Show

Had great fun (and not a little work) this weekend hosting a Pop-up Gallery show of my photographs and my mother’s paintings at Contra Studios in Chelsea. the pivot of the show was a set of 4 images you can see if you look quickly in the video (around the 20-second mark): a snowy photo of mine and my mother’s painting of it and a painting my mother did of some marsh grass in New Jersey and a photograph I took without knowing about hers, which nevertheless has a striking resemblance.

Also in attendance was a large group of my former classmates from PS 198’s class of 1968. I brought our middle school yearbooks, our class photo and set up a screen running a continuous loop of images I shot for the yearbooks back then, our 50th reunion get-together and some random shots around New York in those days. Most of the pictures here are of these friends and were shot by Peter Calvert, a professional artist and/or his wife Suzanne who is a stained glass artist – many thanks Peter and Suzanne!

I also set up an iMac to run loops of slide shows of my street photography set to music which you can see very briefly right at the end of the video (and hear in the background).

Also appearing, a surprise visit from my workshop friend Markus John from Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb‘s Finding Your Vision workshop last Spring, in NY on a brief trip from Germany.

(Click any picture to see them all enlarged and a few captions.)

Ann, Kenneth, Melissa and Peter
This time with me in the pic
Now with Woyman, Magdamari and Valerie
from R-L Peter, his wife Suzanne and older brother Jonathan
Here I am with my mother and son Evan who arranged the gallery space for us
After dinner with the 198 crew
Markus John stopped by on Saturday

I’d also like to thank numerous other friends who stopped by: Frank Burrows, Joe Silver, Gary Shoemaker and Kathleen Chan, Laura Tietjen and Steve Moore, Wayne Parsons and others and my mothers friends from her painting class, her quilting group and her neighbors who were very gracious in their appraisal of the show.