BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – I spent the afternoon today at Brooklyn Bridge Park – a park under construction that’s transforming the Brooklyn waterfront. There was a lot of stuff to photograph. Really. Some tourist shots – the view of lower Manhattan is incomparable; some construction; some people. I’ve had real difficulty sorting it all out so I’m posting a bunch of images. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on the park: Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The Manhattan Bridge seen under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Leica M9 with 135mm APO Telyt lens.
South Street Seaport.
South Street Seaport from Brooklyn Bridge Park
Same camera and lens.
Brooklyn Bridge Park – tidal pool Brooklyn Bridge Park
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – An overcast day with intermit clearing. The sky is really low. Here’s Citicorp center out my office window. I’m using a “new” old lens: a 40mm Leica Summicron-C from 1977. This lens was designed for use with the Leica CL, a “budget” camera produced in a joint venture with Minolta. Leica CL. I found this lens, which is in perfect condition, at a very good price on e-bay – I’ve been watching for one for some time. It has the advantage of being the most compact Leica-built lens for M-mount cameras. It appears to be very, very good. I’ll be exploring its capabilities over the next few days.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Well here I am whining about a tough week again – I’m reduced to grabbing shots on the street between meeting (rather than, say, deciding to go to Bay Ridge to shoot, getting there early and waiting to watch the light develop). Here’s Grand Central Terminal from the outside. It’s an odd building in this respect. The inside (which I photographed earlier in the week) is iconic, but it has no discernible outside – it’s as if it’s a huge cavern hacked out of urban clutter. This is the one point of view, the middle of Park Avenue, where you can actually see it.
This is taken with my Leica M9 and 90mm Elmarit lens. I’ve reproduced it here smaller than usual because it’s slightly blurry – I was dodging traffic on Park Avenue.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I met a friend at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central for lunch – he’s a restaurant reviewer and his mission was to determine whether the Oyster Bar still has its mojo. Well, the Oyster Bar is about the oysters. There were 28 varieties on the menu so we ordered two of each variety: 28 oysters for each guy. Fair warning to our wives. A fabulous lunch. I was too preoccupied with slurping to photograph so I caught this image in Grand Central after lunch.
Grand Central Terminal -ramp from the lower level
Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens. Stitched from three frames.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Another day of meeting complicated by an early evening departure for London. My best shot at getting a daily images is in the early morning. I went by Lever House to take another look at the Mike Bidlo sculpture show. See this link for my Sept 1 photo Turns out the the sculpture has been packed up – the show has been taken down, with only the descriptive placard left behind. This becomes a very deep conceptual work: Mike Bidlo appropriating Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes, but without the Brillo boxes.
Bidlo sans Brillo boxes
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The iconic Seagram Building in very late afternoon light. This is one of my favorite subjects – here the afternoon light emphasizes the color of the bronze cladding.
Seagram Builidng
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – On my way to some meetings I stopped at one of my favorite spots in New York, Lever House, which has a varying selection of provocative art. Lever House had a new installation of the work of Mike Bidlo, a conceptual artist who “appropriates” the work of other artists, in this case Andy Warhol’s 1984 work “Brillo Boxes”. Bidlo calls this work “Not Warhol”.
What follows is not a photograph. It’s a piece of conceptual art that I’m calling “Neither Bidlo Nor Warhol”. Neither Bidlow Nor Warhol
