DeborahShapiroPhotos

Karaouyine Mosque

Fez el Bali (Old Fez) in Morocco is protected by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site. The Karaouyine Mosque is said to be the largest mosque in North Africa but is well hidden in the old city and impossible to find without a guide. A non-Muslim has no chance of entering but is allowed to look through the doors, and so I was able to get this grab shot (above) before anyone objected to my photographing women. Here I had no time to fuss with camera settings and try to get a color picture with unforgiving slide film; I shot black and white. The beautiful, intricate tiles on the left (azulejos in Spanish) were blue and green. The picture below shows one of the courtyards of the mosque as seen from the street.

Karaouyine Mosque

Tangier

This is why I love black and white photography. These men are dying cotton in a vat of bright yellow dye. I had two camera bodies with me, one loaded with color film and one with black and white; I chose to shoot the scene in black and white and I think that it’s infinitely more interesting this way. In a color photograph, the yellow would have leaped out and overwhelmed the image of men doing difficult manual labor in a cramped shop.

Twenty years ago, petty street hustlers flourished on the streets of New York. The shell game and three card monte were classic examples of ways to separate tourists and New Yorkers alike from their money. All you needed to set up a shell game was a couple of cardboard boxes, three thimbles, a dried pea, a shill, and naive passersby whose greed overcame their common sense. The audience always contained one or two shills in league  with the guy running the game who would “win” money periodically to show that they could beat the hustler. Of course, the game was illegal, but police presence was less than it is now and the whole game could be folded at a moment’s notice if one of the shills doubling as lookout spotted a patrol car. It was fun to take photographs of the game without anyone’s awareness, the camera in full view, knowing that the hustlers would not be pleased at all to have their activities recorded on film.

David Peel (right) performing for an appreciative audience

David Peel was a fixture in Washington Square Park for years, performing for free with his band, David Peel and the Lower East Side. It’s hard to believe that he’s still out there, but no less an authority than the New York Times says that he remains true to his principles, which include the legalization of marijuana. Here he is performing at the annual “pot party”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/nyregion/david-peel-sang-once-for-lennon-now-for-occupy-wall-street.html?_r=1&ref=coreykilgannon#

2nd Avenue Deli

1992. The Soviet Union had fallen, and Mikhail Gorbachev was visiting New York as a private citizen on the lecture circuit. He was more popular here than back in the separate parts of his former country, as evidenced by the sign on the awning of the famous 2nd Avenue Deli in the East Village. Note the depiction of his birthmark, so carefully airbrushed out of Soviet-era photos and posters.

For blog readers not familiar with New York, the 2nd Avenue Deli was a beloved landmark for many years until the murder of its longtime owner, who was shot in a robbery attempt while taking the day’s receipts to the bank.

One of my favorite shots of all time. Thanks to Photoshop, after over 20 years I was finally able to eliminate a distracting street lamp from the background with a couple of clicks. In the darkroom era, I labored over it for a very long time and it was still there.