Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Photojournalists settle long fought case against the NYPD

 Via National Press Photographers Association

September 5, 2023


Sept. 5, 2023 - The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has agreed to historic settlement terms with five photojournalists who were attacked and arrested by NYPD during the racial justice protests of 2020. The agreement reinforces the First Amendment rights of the public and the press, provides new protections for journalists operating in New York, and according to the terms of the agreement will improve police training and reinforce proper behavior toward the press.

The settlement resolves a federal lawsuit brought three years ago by attorneys from the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), along with the nationally recognized law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and noted civil rights attorney Wylie Stecklow, on behalf of the five photojournalists, Adam Gray, Jason Donnelly, Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, Mel D. Cole, and Amr Alfiky.


The agreement includes the following terms:

Journalists with press credentials issued by New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) will not need to leave the area when an order to disperse is issued to the general public and members of the press will not be subject to arrest for documenting police activity or for not leaving the general area;


NYPD will not arrest journalists with government-issued credentials for alleged low-level offenses (such as disorderly conduct or obstructing governmental administrations) without prior approval by an incident commander or a Deputy Commissioner, Public Information official. Any summons for such arrests will presumptively be issued to the journalist on site instead of at a police station, thereby discouraging the practice of unlawfully detaining journalists at police stations for hours before charges against them are dropped;


NYPD officers are prohibited from arresting, restricting, or interfering with members of the press for merely observing or recording police activity in public places;


NYPD will recognize the legitimacy of press passes that are issued by jurisdictions outside New York City;


NYPD is required to provide journalists with access “to any location where the public is permitted,” and NYPD officers are barred from putting up crime/accident/incident scene tape or establishing “frozen zones” for the purpose of preventing members of the press from viewing or recording events in public places;


Neither a press pass nor any other form of press identification is needed to observe or record police activity occurring in public places, including areas where protests, crimes, or other matters of public concern are taking place.


In the agreement, the NYPD also—for the first time ever—formally acknowledges that the press has a clearly established First Amendment right to record police activity in public places, and commits itself to respect that right. (See Settlement Agreement, ¶¶ 14, 89.) No press pass or other form of identification is needed to exercise this right. Pursuant to the agreement, the agency will update its guidelines, amend its current policies and training and will specifically train members of the service on treatment of the press and the clearly established right to record police activity in public. The agreement also makes clear that the increased protection for members of the press does not in any way diminish the right of citizens to record police activity in traditional public places.


“Journalists are an essential part of a functioning, civil society and it’s essential that they be allowed to conduct their work free of harassment and assault, especially from state actors,” said Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel to the NPPA. “On behalf of our members and all visual journalists, who perform a vital role as watchdogs and witnesses to history, I am very pleased with the terms of this agreement and the changes to police behavior that it demands.”


“This is not an agreement that will simply sit on a shelf,” added NPPA deputy general counsel Alicia Calzada. “It has real teeth and real mandates for improved training of police at all levels. We are hopeful this will truly change law enforcement culture when it comes to First Amendment activities.”


Attorney Robert D. Balin, who led the litigation for Davis Wright Tremaine accentuated the importance of the case. “The treatment that our clients received at the hands of the NYPD was not only unconstitutional, it was unconscionable, and a direct threat to our democratic principles,” Balin said. “I’m proud that these brave photojournalists chose to hold the police department accountable for their actions and I look forward to seeing the terms of this far-reaching settlement implemented for the benefit of all journalists.”


In addition to the policy changes, the settlement agreement also requires that the NYPD provide extensive annual training to all of its officers—ranging from Police Academy cadets to high-ranking executive personnel—on the First Amendment rights of the press and establishes a police-media relations committee to monitor and discuss future incidents involving the press. Additionally, for a period of three years, a committee headed by the New York City Department of Investigation will monitor police activity at protests to ensure that the NYPD complies with its commitments to respect the rights of peaceful protesters, journalists, and legal observers.


While pervasive mistreatment of journalists covering the George Floyd protests was the catalyst for the civil rights suit (see, Testimony of NPPA General Counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher June 15, 2020, OAG Hearing on Interactions Between NYPD and the General Public, p. 207), the scope of the agreement they ultimately hammered out with the NYPD reaches much further. The provisions in this settlement agreement related to the press are not limited to protest situations, but are crucial First Amendment principles that apply whenever members of the press are covering police activity in public.


“The NYPD’s abuse of the media has been a systemic issue for decades, and today’s injunctive settlement hopefully provides a brighter future for protest and the ability of the press and public to document police interactions at First Amendment activities and beyond in this great City,” said Wylie Stecklow, who in addition to his work on this case, regularly represents photographers and protesters whose rights have been violated by the NYPD. “But today’s announced settlement is not the end, it’s just the beginning of re-training and new NYPD policies to ensure there is respect and protection for the press, up and down the NYPD hierarchy. We cannot expect the rank and file to follow these rules related to the respect of First Amendment rights of the media, if high ranking officers are able to violate the rights of the media with impunity and immunity.”


The five plaintiffs in the case are award-winning visual journalists who have published their work in a variety of leading global news outlets, including Reuters, The New York Times, The Times of London, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Paris Match, Le Monde, CNN, BBC, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and more.


Adam Gray, former chief photographer for the British press agency South West News Service and repeat recipient of the Photographer of the Year Award by the British Press Photographers’ Association, was the first plaintiff to join the case following his wrongful assault and arrest while covering the protests. He was pushed to the ground without warning, arrested, and detained overnight while covering protests in and around Union Square. “I’m extremely grateful for the no-cost representation provided to me and the other news professionals by Rob, Mickey, Wylie and their teams,” said Gray. “These protests happened during a critical inflection point for U.S. society and I am hopeful this settlement will mark a major change in New York’s police culture as well.”


Jae Donnelly, a well-known photographer, and regular contributor to The Daily Mail, was violently assaulted by a baton-wielding officer while photographing protestors in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. “Our lawsuit has fought to change the NYPD rule book on how NYPD from top to bottom treat us news gathering professionals with the professional courtesy,” said Donnelly. “We deserve to be kept safe before one of us is eventually killed at work. My attack by an NYPD sergeant put myself and my family through much pain,” he added.


Amr Alfiky —who was arrested while photographing police activity on the Lower East Side in February 2020, and, in a second incident, violently attacked by an officer while covering protests at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn—celebrated the agreement. “This settlement is indeed historic and goes beyond the compensation for the profound damage caused by excessive use of force and unlawful arrests towards visual journalists and photographers in New York City,” he said. “Hopefully, this is the start of a new era of how journalists are perceived and treated by NYPD.” Alfiky is now a staff photographer for Reuters in the Middle East.


Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, a renowned documentary and news photographer, who was hit in the face by a baton-wielding officer while photographing police beating a young man in Lower Manhattan said, “as a photographer working in conflict zones around the world, I was stunned when the NYPD struck me with a baton, splitting my lip, when I was simply doing my job on the public streets of NYC a few days after the murder of George Floyd. It was the first time I'd suffered an injury while on the job, and it wasn't in war-torn Congo or South Sudan, but in the New York City. I'm glad to see that in the USA, however, when the rights of the press are so egregiously infringed upon, there is a legal system that can come to our support. I do hope our trial will move things in the right direction for us journalists to be able to do our jobs without fear of unlawful arrest or harm, and ultimately for freedom of the press and a more just society.”


Mel D. Cole, a widely published visual journalist and music photographer, was documenting police-protester clashes from the Brooklyn Bridge footpath when he was arrested, stripped of his cameras, and held for seven hours. “Going to jail for doing your job as a photographer should never ever happen. I'm happy that I can now put what should have never been behind me, but I will never forget the feelings that I had that day while being handcuffed and not being able to free when I should have been!” he said.


These terms are all part of a larger settlement announced today of claims that were brought on behalf of peaceful protestors by the New York Attorney General’s Office, the New York Civil Liberties Union, The Legal Aid Society, Gideon Orion Oliver, and civil rights firms Cohen & Green and the Aboushi Law Firm. The NPPA had previously filed public comments and testified during public hearings regarding the mistreatment of the press during the 2020 protests. Along with the agreed upon terms of the settlement, the photographers will all receive monetary compensation.


This significant civil rights litigation was supported by NPPA counsel Osterreicher and Calzada and a team that consisted of Davis Wright Tremaine counsel Robert D. Balin, Abigail Everdell, Alison Schary, Kathleen Farley, Alexandra Settelmayer, Nimra Azmi, Megan Amaris, Jean Fundakowski and Veronica Muriel Carrioni, and paralegal Megan Duffy, along with attorney Wiley Stecklow of Wylie Stecklow, PLLC.

About the National Press Photographers Association NPPA is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of visual journalism in its creation, editing, and distribution. NPPA’s members include video and still photographers, editors, students, and representatives of businesses that serve the visual journalism community. Since its founding in 1946, the NPPA has been the Voice of Visual Journalists, vigorously promoting the constitutional and intellectual property rights of journalists as well as freedom of the press in all its forms, especially as it relates to visual journalism. For more information, go to nppa.org.




Photojournalists settle long fought case against the NYPD (nppa.org)


Friday, June 2, 2023

Tony Vaccaro in 'This Is New York'

 

Via NPR

June 1, 2023

black and white photograph of dancer Gwen Verdon lounging in a hammock on a balcony overlooking the New York skyline in 1953

In a town where private space is at a premium, this 1953 photo from Michael "Tony" Vaccaro 
taken for LOOK magazine shows off a stylish way to get a city view.
Michael "Tony" Vaccaro /Museum of the City of New York


Visiting New York City this summer? A fun, family-friendly exhibit celebrating movies, TV shows, music, books, fashion and art inspired by the city is now open at the Museum of the City of New York.

This Is New York is in celebration of the museum's own centennial. It turns out that the past 100 years have been rich ones for depicting the city.

"1923 is really at the beginning of mass American culture ... Radio, film, it's at the beginning of a whole cultural explosion," said Lilly Tuttle, one of the curators. She said the exhibit is meant to capture New York as artists have experienced it during that time. It's not a love letter.

"It's a crowded, dirty, smelly, rude, cacophonous place. And also glamorous and wonderful and glitzy and fabulous and elegant and cool. And artists across time and across media have captured that," she said. "It's all in here, all at once."

But there's so much to see — in this corner, Jake LaMotta's boxing gloves from Raging Bull! In that corner, a video mocking the meme Pizza Rat! — that it can be overwhelming. Full article here.




color photograph of dancer Gwen Verdon lounging in a hammock on a balcony overlooking the New York skyline in 1953
Gwen Verdon, New York City, NY, 1953



Friday, April 28, 2023

REMEMBERING THE RADICAL WOMEN OF NEW YORK'S PHOTO LEAGUE

screen shot of on-line article "Remembering the radical women of The Photo League" with close up of 3 boys posing with fists raided in front of poster-covered outside wall

 Via Huck Magazine

April 26, 2023
By Miss Rosen

A new exhibition revisits the work of Sonia Handelman Meyer and Ida Wyman, who devoted themselves to social justice and chronicling daily city life as part of one of the most progressive art collectives in US history.


In 1936, a group of predominantly Jewish-American photographers in New York City came together to form The Photo League, dedicating themselves to using the camera in the ongoing fight for social change. By the ‘40s, the League’s roster included luminaries like W. Eugene Smith, Berenice Abbott, Paul Strand, Lisette Model and Weegee, with women accounting for more than a third of their membership at a time when gender equity in the industry was extremely rare.

Standing at the vanguard of art and activism, the League was dedicated to supporting the struggles of American workers through the Depression and the start of the post-war boom – only to be targeted by the FBI during the early years of the Red Scare. In 1947, the US Department of Justice blacklisted the Photo League as a “subversive organisation,” putting members at risk of government persecution.

The League rallied but was ultimately no match for the state, which used a paid informant to destroy the photography collective in court. Although the League finally disbanded in 1951, its legacy lives on in both the work of its members and their shared commitment to human rights.


four well-dressed men by street lamp in Spanish Harlem, New York c.1946
Sonia Handelman Meyer
Sharp dressers on the corner, Spanish Harlem (1946-1950) 



In a new exhibition, gallerists Sid and Michelle Monroe revisit the groundbreaking work of two photographers whose work as gone unrecognised until recent years: Ida Wyman (1926-2019) and Sonia Handelman Meyer (1920-1922).

Joe Meyer, manager of the Sonia Handelman Meyer Estate, remembers his mother as an artist and activist who first took interest in social issues as a teen. “When she joined the Photo League in her mid-20s, she found a new medium to share her radical ideals with an even broader audience,” he says.

Handelman Meyer attended rallies and participated in boycotts, devoting herself to civil rights, environmental and anti-war causes. Standing at the frontlines, she was tear gassed during protests in Washington D.C., charged by a mounted policeman in New York, and had rocks thrown at her during the 1949 Peekskill Riot.

In an artist statement written in her later years, Handelman Meyer recounted her work for the League photographing at an anti-lynching rally in Madison Square Park, at a Jehovah’s Witness convention in Yankee Stadium, and at the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, as well as chronicling daily life in New York, which she descried as “rough-edged, tender and very beautiful in its diversity.”

After the League shut down, Handelman Meyer packed up her prints and negatives and went underground for three years, fearing repercussions of her involvement. She lost track of League members, focusing her energy on raising a family and photographing nature instead.

After a series of events brought her work back into the public eye in 2007, Handelman Meyer, then 87, was finally able to receive the recognition she deserved. Charged with purpose, she picked up where she left off, passing along the mission of the Photo League to a new generation of photographers.

Sonia Handelman Meyer and Ida Wyman: Pioneering Women of the Photo League is on view April 21 – June 18, 2023, at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

PHOTO2022: In Conversation with Ashley Gilbertson

 Via National Gallery of Victoria


Looking back over the photographs that he made of New York in 2020 Australian photographer Ashley Gilbertson wrote, ‘The resulting photo essay is my requiem to the New York that we knew before the pandemic, but also a love letter to the resilient people who never gave up.’

One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic was the shutting down of much of New York and the suspension of national and international travel. For Gilbertson, this enforced a shift in his focus had a profound impact on his life and work. Already a regular runner, his practice during 2020 involved daily distance running and using the camera in his phone to photograph the events unfolding around him as he ran through the streets of the city. Over the course of the year, he documented the trajectory of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the US presidential election, creating a visual diary of the unfolding events across the city.


Join Ashley Gilbertson to discuss his work in conversation with NGV Senior Curator of Photography Susan van Wyk.

Thursday, 5 May, 11am (AEST)  Free entry

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square Level 2

Booking is not required

General enquiries

Ph +61 3 8620 2222

ngvenquiries@ngv.vic.gov.au

9am–5pm, daily


Speakers

Susan van Wyk

Senior Curator, Photography

Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson was born in Melbourne in 1978, lives and works in New York, and is a member of the VII Photo Agency. Gilbertson’s early work focused on refugees around the world, an interest that in 2002, led him to Iraq. His work in that country, made largely on contract for The New York Times, earned critical acclaim and he was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his 2004 work in Falluja. One of the leading photojournalists of his generation, Gilbertson has been recognised for his photographs in conflict zones, empathetic pictures of the global refugee crisis and his humanist approach to photography as a documentary medium.

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Requiem to New York: Photographs by Ashley Gilbertson

 Via National Gallery of Victoria

April 28, 2022



Melbourne-born Ashley Gilbertson has crafted a career from his human, empathetic approach to photojournalism, most recently channelled through his images of New York City in 2020, when the metropolis was in the deepest throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gilbertson’s astute eye captured both sadness and moments of joy. Full article here.


View Ashley Gilbertson's photographs at The AIPAD Photography Fair May 20-22 in New York City, booth #113, Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Monday, February 21, 2022

Listening with his camera: The late photographer Don Hunstein captured a golden age of music

 

Via the Daily Hampshire Gazette


black and white photograph of Don Hunstein with his camera
Portrait of the artist: Photographer Don Hunstein took many iconic shots of musicians from the late 1950s to the 1980s by putting them at ease. Image courtesy cdeVision

It’s arguably one of the most iconic album covers of all time, certainly in the folk and pop world: a young Bob Dylan, on the cusp of stardom, walks down a slushy street in Greenwich Village in New York City, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, as his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, clings to his left arm.

That image, from the 1963 disc “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” came out of a session that Don Hunstein, a longtime director of photography for Columbia Records, had staged with Dylan in the singer’s nearby apartment, capturing the rising folk star as he played his acoustic guitar, sprawled in a beat-up armchair, and tried at one point to smoke and sing at the same time — another memorable shot

Those are just two of hundreds of impressive images that are now preserved on a website dedicated to Hunstein’s work, a site put together by Hunstein’s daughter, Tina Cornell, who lives in Florence with her family, and cdeVision, a Holyoke web studio specializing in advertising, website design and more.

Along with taking many shots of Dylan in his early career, Hunstein, who died in 2017, photographed a huge array of stars on Columbia’s roster from the late 1950s into the 1980s: Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Barbara Streisand, Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Billy Joel.

The photographer also shot hundreds of album covers, including Loretta Lynn’s memorable “Coal Miner’s Daughter” from 1970, as well as the records of classical musicians including pianist Glenn Gould.

Hunstein, born in 1928 in Missouri, grew up in St. Louis but settled in New York in the 1950s. He made his mark as a documentary photographer — his adopted home was a favorite subject — whose unobtrusive style, Cornell says, helped put his subjects at ease.

As one of his obituaries noted, “Don had the ability to listen with his camera. Instinctively he under stood that to capture artists at their best moments, patience, trust and humility were needed.”

Now Cornell and her mother, DeeAnne Hunstein, who also helped develop the website, are hoping to bring some more attention to Hunstein’s work, in turn highlighting an era when photography became an important tool for documenting the cultural history of music.

“My dad was humble to a fault, just very self-effacing,” Cornell said during a recent phone call. “He didn’t act like a fan [of musicians] or put himself out there like he was some kind of big shot … He saw this as a job, and he always said he was lucky to be at the right place at the right time.

“And yet he created all these great images,” she noted. “People liked him — they felt comfortable around him, he was good at making a joke, and that’s why he was able to do what he did.”

Case in point: Cornell says Johnny Cash could sometimes be testy with reporters and photographers, but her father and the gritty country singer hit it off, with Cash inviting Hunstein to visit him on his Texas ranch in the late 1950s.

Though Hunstein mostly took black and white photos, his website offers a couple especially atmospheric images of Cash in color. In one, wearing a checked shirt and a straw hat, he leans on a worn wooden fence rail and looks off moodily into the distance. In another, the singer, this time decked out in dark suit and white shirt, sits with his guitar on a huge woodpile, his nearby open guitar case revealing a bright purple interior.

“I love that mix of colors!” Cornell said.

hen there’s the near-silhouette of jazz great Thelonious Monk, hunched over a piano, a cigarette dangling from his mouth (there was a lot of smoking in Columbia’s studios in those days). And Cornell says one of her father’s favorite photos was an image he took of Duke Ellington, his “all-time hero,” as she puts it.

“My dad used to say he was really lucky to have this job, because he was such a huge music fan himself,” she said.

‘Don Hunstein did all this?!’

Bill Alatalo, a co-partner of cdeVision with Antonio Costa, says the company actually first designed a website for Hunstein’s work perhaps a dozen years ago after Cornell first approached them. It was a simpler affair, with far fewer images, Alatalo notes, in part because Cornell and her mother were busy at the time trying to help Hunstein, who struggled with Alzheimer’s disease for about a decade before his death.

Then Cornell got back in touch about a year ago, Alatalo said, and asked if cdeVision could develop a new site. “The old one kind of got lost in the shuffle, and at this point Tina had a lot more photos for us to work with,” he said. “Antonio and I were amazed — we were like, ‘Don Hunstein did all this?!’ ”

As a music lover and record collector himself, Alatalo says the Hunstein website “has just been a cool project to work on, to really give it some play and give people a better sense of what he did.” The website also dovetails with other music-related work cdeVision has done in recent years, Alatalo said, such as designing a new site for Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield.

For Cornell, who was born in 1968, her father’s website is a deeply personal project. She was inspired by his work as she got older, she says, and studied photography herself as well as drawing and painting. She came to the Valley about 20 years ago with a former partner, and the couple had plans then to create a pottery studio. Today she works as a jeweler and goldsmith and also is involved with a local chapter of an environmental group, Mothers Out Front.

She can remember going as a kid to her father’s studio at Columbia Records, then located in a building on 52th Street near 5th Avenue in Manhattan, and “playing with the props” while her dad was arranging shots of various artists.

“It wasn’t until I was older that I really developed an awareness of the full scope of his work,” she said.

Cornell and her mother have also established the new website as a means of protecting the provenance of Hunstein’s work. Some of his photos now crop up online, such as on people’s Instagram sites, and go uncredited, she noted, and she’s had to ask people to remove the pictures.

In addition, the Sony Corp. bought Columbia Records (and Columbia Pictures) in the late 1980s, acquiring all of Hunstein’s work for the record label, and Cornell and her mother have since worked with Sony to gain access to many of those images.

Ultimately, Cornell says, the website is designed to reacquaint people with her father’s work and his era as a photographer. He never took to computers or digital photography, she notes, instead working with contact sheets in his darkroom, giving his photos a distinctive style and pedigree that she believes is worth commemorating.

More are added to the website regularly, she says, and the site also has many images her father took of Puerto Rican communities in New York City in the early 1960s, part of a book project for an English publisher.

“My dad was just a huge part of my life,” she said. “This is my way of honoring that.”





Friday, September 10, 2021

9/11 In Remembrance Exhibition

 


Santa Fe, NM -- Monroe Gallery of Photography announces an exhibition of photographs commemorating the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that became known as 9/11. 




The twin towers design process started in 1965 and construction began in 1972. The twin towers were the tallest buildings in the world for a very short time. Photographs in the exhibit document the construction of the World Trade Center, its prominence in the skyline of Manhattan, and the devastation of September 11, 2001

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Sunday, March 21, 2021

“A City Ruptured” with Ashley Gilbertson and Renee Melides

 


black and white photograph of steam on Third Ave, Midtown East, September 30, 2020
Photo by Ash Gilbertson / VII for The New York Times.
 Third Ave, Midtown East, September 30, 2020

Via VII Insider

Date: Monday, March 22, 2021

09:00–10:15AM EDT

Join here


Join NY Times Editor Renee Melides and VII Photographer Ashley Gilbertson to discuss “A City Ruptured” on March 22 at 9 AM EDT.

The duo will discuss their year of COVID-19 coverage in New York City, the concepts behind the work, the production of a months-long story, and the importance of collaboration on projects.

Renee Melides

Renee Melides is a Photo Editor at The New York Times and is currently based in New York. Renee also worked for The Times in both their London and Hong Kong bureaus. Prior to this, she was the Deputy Photo Editor at Monocle Magazine in London.

Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson is an Australian photographer and writer living in New York City widely recognized for his critical eye and unique approaches to social issues. Gilbertson is a member of the VII Agency, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a collaborator with the United Nations.


View the exhibition "History Now" featuring several of Ashley Gilbertson's photographs.

View a selection of Ashley Gilbertson's prints


Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Ashley Gilbertson: "My requiem to the New York that we knew before the pandemic, but also a love letter to the resilient people who never gave up."

 

Via The New Yok Times

March 10, 2021

black and white photo of a Food line on Allen Street, New York City, August 11, 2020



The pandemic shattered the city’s economy, affecting people’s homes, livelihoods and wallets. One photojournalist documented the hardships, as both a lament and a tribute.

"I needed to photograph our decimated economy in a way that brought the various elements to life — through the people living it. The resulting photo essay is my requiem to the New York that we knew before the pandemic, but also a love letter to the resilient people who never gave up." -Ashley Gilbertson





Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Exhibition of Photographs by Andreas Feininger



Unloading coffee at Brooklyn dock, New York, c. 1946
Andreas Feininger


ANDREAS FEININGER

February 13 - April 5

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Andreas Feininger. The exhibition opens Friday, February 13 and continues through April 5.

Feininger’s pictures of New York in the 1940s and ’50s helped define, for all time, not merely how a great 20th century city looked, but how it imagined itself and its place in the world. With its traffic-jammed streets, gritty waterfronts, iconic bridges and inimitable skyline, the city assumed the character of a vast, vibrant landscape. Featured in the exhibition are many of Feiniger's most iconic New York cityscapes, as well as many other 

Andreas Feininger was born in Paris, educated in the Bauhaus, and trained as an architect and structural engineer. He began using the camera in the early 1920’s as a “mechanical sketchbook” for building designs. Son of the acclaimed artist Lyonel Feininger, Andreas Feininger turned to photography full-time in 1932.

Andreas Feininger devoted his life to a full exploration of both the science and art of photography. His creative vision is rooted in the conviction that the camera is superior to the eye, and that the photograph can, and ideally should, portray the world more graphic than reality itself. From his earliest photographs, through two decades as a LIFE magazine photographer, to recent images taken in the 1980’s, few photographers in the 20th century have displayed the range of Andreas Feininger. 

Feininger’s work is characterized by an unusual sensitivity to form and an extraordinary sense of composition. His photographs reveal hidden structure and beauty in panoramic urban and industrial landscapes. Feininger has said “The city has attracted me since my earliest days as a photographer. But in time this love has grown to include all the aspects of the city - not only its buildings, but also its people, cars, traffic jams, confusion, and even ugliness. I see the city as a living organism: dynamic, sometimes violent, and even brutal.” 

Andreas Feininger has been the subject of over 50 books, including several text-books which he has authored. He was a leading staff photographer at LIFE magazine, completing over 430 assignments. His work has appeared in numerous other publications throughout the United States and Europe. In 1983, the British Broadcasting Corporation included Andreas Feininger in a six-installment television documentary about the most important living photographers; the other featured photographers were: Ansel Adams, Bill Brandt, Alfred Eisenstaedt, André Kertész, and Jacques-Henri Lartigue.

Feininger’s photographs are in many important collections, including: The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum of Art, The Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society, and The International Center of Photography, NY. Andreas Feininger died in Manhattan in February 1999. He was 92.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Rising Waters: Photographs of Sandy



Oct 29, 2013 - Mar 2, 2014
1220 5th Ave, Manhattan, NY 10029
 
Presented to mark the one-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, Rising Waters draws on work submitted by over a thousand photographers, both professional and amateur, who responded to an open call for images in the storm's wake. The juried exhibition features striking before-and-after images of the hurricane's impact on the New York region, including preparations, the storm's destructive effects, and the ongoing rebuilding efforts.

This exhibition is part of the City Museum's ongoing initiative to present the photographic works of people from all walks of life as they capture pivotal moments in the city's history and is presented in conjunction with the International Center of Photography.


Photograph by Amy Medina
Once Again, October 30, 2012
Sayville, Long Island
Photograph by Amy Medina(DangRabbit)
 
 


The exhibit includes several photographs taken by Stephen Wilkes during Hurricane Sandy, including the iconic image of the Roller Coaster in Seaside Heights, New Jersey.

Friday, November 30, 2012

To Do Monday: Stephen Wilkes Talks "Day To Night"

Sponsored by Adorama and Canon

Stephen Wilkes: The Big Picture
Monday, Dec 3, 2012
5:30PM - 7:30PM
Event location:
Event Description:

Stephen Wilkes is well known internationally for his fine art and commercial photography, and during this evening's presentation he'll be showing and discussing the pictures, themes, and genres that are signatures of his work. Many of his images, at once epic in scale all share a unique human narrative, showcasing his fascination with scale, and reflecting his passion for making 'The Big Picture.'

He'll show his latest fine art series, "Day to Night', where Stephen photographs a scene from the same perspective during a minimum of 10 hours, as he says, "capturing a fluid visual narrative of day into night within a single frame."

Stephen's assignments and projects have taken him around the globe, where his continuing interest in architectural imagery and how rapid industrial growth impacts our world and environment. He'll be showing examples that range from his series on China's transformation from it's rural and natural beauty to teeming cities as an industrial behemoth, to a recent commercial assignment in Mumbai that combined his expertise shooting on location in challenging situations and combining his exciting visualization capturing the essence and energy of a place. He'll also be showing images from his Ellis Island series, and from the Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill series among others.

Throughout the presentation, be prepared to look at things differently; you will see and hear about the symbiotic relationship between his commercial and fine art work, as Stephen shares how he manages to balance an active commercial and fine art career.

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(A selection of Stephen Wilkes' Day To Night photographs are currently on view at the gallery. UPDATE: Contact the gallery for news about the newest international addition to the collection: Jerusalem, Day To Night.)


Biography: Stephen Wilkes

  For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art and commercial photography. His photographs have been exhibited in both galleries and museums, and featured in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Time, Sports Illustrated, London Sunday Times, and Travel + Leisure.

In 2000, Epson America commissioned him to create a millennial portrait of the United States, a 52-day odyssey that resulted in a critically acclaimed exhibition that traveled to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

The monograph, Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom was published in 2006. Stephen was featured on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon of NPR, CBS Sunday Morning with Martha Teichner and the book received high critical acclaim including Time Magazine's 5 Best Photography Books of The Year, 2006. His newest body of work is titled Day to Night. The work embodies epic cityscapes of New York with fleeting moments throughout the day to night. Stephen photographs from one camera angle continuously for approximately 15 hours. A select group of images are then electronically blended into one photograph. The photographs have been exhibited at Clampart Gallery in NYC, and Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe. CBS Sunday Morning  featured Stephen in a segment on his process in creating Day to Night images on November 11, 2012.

In 1999 he completed a personal project photographing the south side of Ellis Island: the ruined landscape of the infectious disease and psychiatric hospital wings, where children and adults alike were detained before they could enter America. Through his photographs and video work, Stephen has inspired and helped secure $6 million in funding towards the restoration for the south side of the island.

Educated at Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, his awards and honors include the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography, Photographer of the Year from Adweek Magazine, Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2004 Lucie Award, and the Epson Creativity Award.
Stephen's work is in the permanent collection of the International Museum of Photography in the George Eastman House, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Dow Jones Collection, Griffin Museum of Photography, Jewish Museum of New York, Library of Congress and numerous private collections.

He also shoots advertising campaigns for many of the worlds leading agencies and corporations, including, SAP, IBM, PepsiCo, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, American Express, Nike, Sony, Verizon, IBM, AT&T, Rolex, Honda, J.W.T., EuroRSCG, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and Rubin Postaer among others.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Stephen Wilkes' Sandy Photo Essay for TIME Magazine

Stephen Wilkes for TIME
Breezy Point, N.Y.: On the night Sandy made landfall, a fire swept through this community on the tip of the Rockaway Peninsula, consuming more than 100 homes.

Flooded, Uprooted, Burned: The Tracks of Sandy on the ShoreVia Time LightBox


"After TIME commissioned me, along with four other photographers, to capture Hurricane Sandy using Instagram, I and many of my colleagues felt a deep personal need to go back and document the aftermath. I’ve covered disasters in other parts of our country, but this is my hometown, and Sandy was a storm of historical significance. I’ve often found that there is great power in telling difficult stories in a beautiful way. Interest in any given story wanes so quickly, yet it’s only through taking the time to go deeper that we get to a place of real understanding. I had to return to this story, and I wanted try to comprehend the scale of this storm. The only way for me to capture Sandy’s destructive fury was from above.
 
On the Sunday after Sandy made landfall, I decided to rent a helicopter and fly over some of the most devastated areas, including the New Jersey shore, Breezy Point and Far Rockaway. It was a beautiful day to fly, but unfortunately that beauty quickly eroded into shock as we began to get close to the coasts. It was everything I’d heard about, but it was difficult to believe what I was actually seeing. Once we got above the shoreline, I really started to understand the scale of the destruction. The expanse of land it ruined, the totality of the devastation — it was like a giant mallet had swung in circles around the area. It was mind numbing.

When I got home that night, the images still in my mind made it impossible to sleep. Through various points of this storm, it felt like we were all living through a science fiction movie. Seeing these devastated towns from above showed the cold reality of this storm’s severity.

From above, I realized how close particular neighborhoods were to bays or oceans. Sometimes, it was a matter of two blocks, and it’s a proximity not immediately apparent when you’re on the ground. In Breezy Point, for example, I knew that more than 80 homes had burned down in a fire, but nothing could have prepared me for what I actually saw. The blackened and charred blocks of homes viewed as a giant physical scar across the landscape. Seeing how much land was affected and yet how many homes were saved, made me think of the firefighters and how hard they must have worked just to contain this fire.

In flying over Staten Island, I was really struck by the marina, and how the boats were physically lifted from the pier and tossed together. It looked like a child’s game—huge, 40-ft. boats being thrown around like toys. We then flew over Oakwood, where I saw a house that had been lifted and dragged through a field of cattails; its path clearly visible days later, having left a trail of destruction through the cattails.

Sandy was a warning shot. I’ve had a unique view of what’s happened on a physical level. But the emotional toll has yet to be measured. It’s my hope that these images serve as a wakeup call — whether that call is about global warming, infrastructure, or just the recognition that the world is changing, it’s a reminder that we need to take special care of our fragile world." -- Stephen Wilkes



Stephen Wilkes is a fine-art and commercial photographer based in New York. Wilkes was awarded the Photo District News Award of Excellence in 2011 and 2012.

Wilkes’ work will be part of a Sandy relief benefit auction hosted by 20×200 and TIME. Visit LightBox on Monday for more information.



Related: Stephen Wilkes Day To Night on CBS News Sunday Morning

Wednesday, October 31, 2012


In lower Manhattan now at night, with no power, cell phone service, light is from police and ambulance lights, red, orange, blue, or from the little flashlights people carry while they’re walking their dogs, or from car lights, and just Tuesday night, buses.

The point of reference, like the North Star, is the Empire State Building, the line of demarcation. Everything North of the Building is normal, as though little happened. South of it is like another world, unreal, quiet, like a movie set.

© Nina Berman, 30 October 2012
 
 
 
 
The images and first-person descriptions from the East Coast are almost incomprehensible. For all of our family members, friends, clients, colleagues, and everyone affected, our thoughts and prayers are with you.
 
 
 

Friday, October 26, 2012

Statue of Liberty Crown Reopens




For one of the best views of New York, you have to get inside a great lady’s head.

Via NBC News


Starting this weekend, it’s possible again as the Statue of Liberty crown reopens to the public on Sunday after a year of renovations. Visitors seeking magnificent vistas of the Big Apple and a glimpse of the famous monument’s inner workings are already snapping up tickets online.


“It’s an experience that stays with you for your entire lifetime,” said Chris Heywood, a spokesman for New York City’s official tourism agency NYC & Company, who still remembers making the climb as a child.


“The Statue of Liberty remains one of the city’s most iconic attractions and there certainly will be a pent up demand for visitors to want to go up and see the crown.”


The renovations promise better access and safer conditions. There are two new staircases, a new elevator inside the pedestal and a lift that will take visitors who are mobility impaired higher into the monument than ever before, said Mindi Rambo, a spokeswoman for the National Parks of New York Harbor.


“For the first time, people in wheelchairs will be able to go up to the top of the pedestal and actually see into the statue, whereas before, the highest level that they ever really got to was the museum level,” Rambo said.


“The lift is brand new, we’ve never had that before and we’re very excited about it.”


There is no elevator service from Lady Liberty’s feet to her head, so visitors must still go up a double spiral staircase to reach the crown. Official pamphlets warn it’s a strenuous journey, but Heywood recalled that it feels short “when you’re looking forward to a view that’s stunning.”


It takes adults up to 20 minutes to make the climb depending on whether they stop to examine the statue’s inner architecture and copper skin, Rambo said.


“You can see the folds of the robe, the interior of the statue, and many people find that fascinating. They stop to take photos and point things out to their kids like, ‘Oh, that looks like the back of her heel,’” Rambo said.


Once at the top, only 10 adults can fit inside the crown, a space that’s much smaller than people expect, Rambo added. Visitors often tell park rangers that they have come because they remember making the trip as a child and want their kids to have the same experience.
 
“I think part of that is just driven by the ability to say that they have made that climb and to look out into the harbor and, I suppose in a way, to look back in time to when people came on the big steam ships,” Rambo said.
 
The crown will be open each week from Thursday through Sunday. If you’d like to visit, you must make a reservation through Statue Cruises – the monument’s ferry transportation provider.

Tickets became available on October 1 and sales have been brisk: just a few dates in December remain available for 2012.

This is the second time in recent years that the National Park Service is reopening the statue’s crown. The attraction was closed after the 9/11 attacks for security reasons and then reopened on July 4, 2009.



National Park Service
Visitors to the crown of the Statue of Liberty get a great look at New York Harbor.
 
 
National Park Service         
National Park Service staff and the media greeted visitors when Lady Liberty's crown reopened on July 4, 2009, after being closed following the 9/11 attacks.

 
The chance to make the climb will give travelers just one more reason to visit New York, which is on track to set another record year for tourism, Heywood said.


Sunday’s crown reopening also coincides with the 126th anniversary of the statue’s dedication.


Margaret Bourke-White: Statue of Liberty

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Coney Island's endless summer

To create this image, the photographer spent 15 hours suspended in a crane 150 feet above the Coney Island boardwalk.

To create this image, the photographer spent 15 hours suspended in a crane 150 feet above the Coney Island boardwalk

Via Fortune Magazine

New York City's No. 1 destination for thrill-seekers is in the middle of a high-dollar facelift.

By Anne VanderMey, reporter


FORTUNE -- In 1938, at the height of Coney Island's popularity, Fortune reported that the "narrow strip of land, about 800 to 1,000 feet in width and two and a quarter miles long," was valued at about $22 million, or $337 million in today's dollars. But the strip is probably worth more than that: New York City expects the boardwalk to generate $14 billion in the next three decades.

By the numbers:
11 million: Number of visitors to Coney Island last summer. Of those, 640,000 went to Luna Park and Scream Zone for the 26 rides -- the highest amusement park attendance since 1964. Two new rides will open this summer.

$4.5 million: Sale price of the Eldorado Auto Skooters building, purchased this spring by Thor Equities. Thor now owns about seven acres of land in Coney Island, and plans to develop some of its properties into ritzy hotels.

90 mph: Top speed of the Sling Shot, Luna Park's fastest ride. The first roller coaster in the U.S. made its debut in Coney Island in 1884. It cost 5¢ to ride and topped out at 6 mph. The Sling Shot costs $20 a pop.

Source: New York City Economic Development Corp.
This story is from the June 11, 2012 issue of Fortune.



Related: Stephen Wilkes: Day To Night exhibition extened through June 24