NYC – Page 17 – Brooklyn Diasporism

New Structure at Brooklyn Bridge Park

[click the photo to enlarge]

However much the neighborhood has changed —and in its way suffered— with the last decade of gentrification, I still have a handful of favorites on the Lower East Side, relative newcomers CW Pencil Enterprise and Russ & Daughters Café, and stalwarts Economy Candy, and Katz’s Delicatessen among them.

But this handful of photos takes passing stock of some in-between stuff, things seen en route from one stop to another.

Pier 2 Courts

This group of photos was taken midday last Saturday during the Dew NBA event at the basketball courts on Pier 2 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The general sense of activity was rather loose when I happened by, and although there was play on each court, it appeared to be entirely unsupervised, so I couldn’t tell if it was part of the event or not. Maybe I showed up between rounds and these guys were playing pickup to fill the time.

Handball

I’m not aware of another city that has our quotidian relationship with handball courts. Anyone familiar with New York City’s park system recognizes these walls with unattended indifference. Should the walls, on the other hand, appear unused and mysteriously erect and their purpose unclear, it takes only a quick query to a local to learn that they’re for handball. Like eating pizza while walking or scaffold pull-ups, handball is a not infrequently-occurring phenomenon here in New York.

One Walker in Manhattan

I grabbed this image while my wife and I were driving east across town to the Manhattan Bridge. The location is the corner of Lafayette and Walker Streets in Chinatown. My wife was driving and I was making nearly-random exposures from the passenger seat. I don’t frequently shoot this way but have had some luck in the past and thought I’d give it a try.

I was pleased with this one, not least because it presents a pedestrian on Walker St., but also because the Vietnamese store behind her features the anomalous “records” on its awning among its many delights and sundry items. And I’m always happy to see a store that sells records.

New York City

Jill Freedman

Recent Color Photographs

As to why I separate black and white photos from color photos, it has more to do with intention than spectra. However pleasant it is to see only black and white images together, if only for the sake of consistency, I’m not trying to get the same meanings or implications from one format as I am from the other. Black and white is more photographic, perhaps less concerned with how things look than how they are. Color is more difficult in that we know immediately when it’s wrong, and can thus be easily distracted from what other subjects and objects the image might be putting to work. So a photo that works in color works in part because of its fidelity to how its subject appears without being photographed. A photo that works in black and white works in spite or because of its obvious distinction from a more varied palette. Not news, necessarily, but this seems as good a place as any to think out loud. Enjoy the photos.