Summer
Winter
Conservatory
A visit to the New York Botanical Garden turned out to be different from the routine with the installation of four monumental sculptures by Philip Haas called The Four Seasons. The artist reimagined the series of Renaissance portraits by Giuseppe Arcimboldo and brought them into three dimensions. The last picture shows the scale, with Autumn and Winter in front of the conservatory. All photos made with iPhone.
Central Park Zoo 2009
Rest in peace, old guy.
Saturday in Times Square, post Bloomberg.
They are watching you
42nd Street
The Greenmarkets are as close as most New Yorkers get to the source of their fruits and vegetables. Who knew that garlic has two-foot stalks, that tomatoes could be so beautiful, or that onion roots look like sea anemones?
It’s a Speed Graphic made in the 1940’s, the kind tabloid photographers like Weegee used. Street photographer Louis Mendes fitted a Polaroid back to it, which he uses to make his specialty double exposures. Flashbulbs in 2013? No problem. He bought 20,000 flashbulbs from a warehouse that was closing and he will rely on his Vivitar 283 flash once he runs out of flashbulbs. For over 30 years Louis has made a living shooting portraits of New Yorkers and tourists on the streets and at events. When he says he works at B&H Photo, he doesn’t mean inside; people who buy cameras are apparently good customers, since they are used to being behind a lens instead of in front of one.
Google Glass one day, Speed Graphic the next: isn’t New York wonderful?
http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2012/04/06/a-walk-through-nyc-with-louis-mendes-street-photographer/
A man brandishing an iPad and giving a tour of Little Italy outside La Grotta Azzurra Restaurant, corner of Broome and Mulberry. A gaggle of tourists, some dangling expensive Canons or Nikons. I think he was explaining which mafioso got whacked at which restaurant. A very angry middle aged to older man with a bald head, a polo shirt the color of an orange gelato, and shorts revealing very arthritic knees with resultant bowlegs, supported by a cane. He snarls “Get the fuck out of this neighborhood!” to the guy wielding the iPad, who ignores him. Time was, his words would have chilled a man’s bones to the marrow. That time has passed. No respect. His neighbors have moved to Queens and Nassau. The FBI has done its work and the wise guys have been diminished. No more “social clubs” on Thompson Street and Mulberry Street, where German shepherds napped, rousing themselves to snarl at black passersby. Chinese souvenir sellers have established a beachhead as Chinatown pushes ever further north. Mulberry Street is a tourist mall; didn’t you know?
The Giglio and the Boat
The Lifters
A church member
This is the 126th annual procession of the Giglio (Lily) at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Giglio is a 60-foot, 4 ton steel tower which is carried through the streets on the shoulders of lifters. At the same time a boat representing a pirate ship is carried to meet it, and at the climax of the procession the lifters from each side shake hands while brass bands play the Giglio Song. All this commemorates the life of St. Paulinus who was released from captivity by the Turks and returned in triumph to his home town, where he was met by the townspeople carrying lilies. Long before Williamsburg became a hotbed of art galleries followed by a nidus of multimillion-dollar condos, it was a neighborhood of southern Italian immigrants. The Giglio Feast draws Italian-Americans who may have moved away from the neighborhood but never miss the festival that they have loved all their lives. If you missed today’s lift, there will be another one on Wednesday at 7 PM.
http://www.olmcfeast.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=37&Itemid=54
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/126th-giglio-feast-take-place-williamsburg-2013-06-26-183000
DeborahShapiroPhotos 