At the time I photographed this young thoroughbred being broken in (probably 1955), I was flying cargo planes to Australia for Freddie Laker. We used to have a stop-over in Karachi on the way. In London I exercised polo ponies in Richmond Park three mornings a week and I missed my rides when I was away on the two week round trip to Australia.
I asked at the hotel if there were any stables nearby and they said I should try the racing stables. I was not at all sure I could handle a race horse but they gave me one of their nice gentle retired animals. I still scared myself galloping across the desert.
I was lucky enough to be there one morning when this young horse was of being broken in. He had not yet had a saddle put on him. It was one of the first photographs I took with my Rolleiflex 2.8E
Only ten days ago I wrote that soon I will not want to stand around street corners in the biting wind looking for subjects. Yesterday we sat in the warmth of Diner in Williamsburg, staring only at back views lining the bar. So, fortified with ham and cheese I decided to brave it and wait on a nice open piece of ground away from clutter and not crowded, where Broadway and South 6th Street intersect, shivering a bit but feeling that someone would turn up. And they did. First Danny, top, wearing his father's jacket, bought in the 1960s on Carnaby Street in London. He said,"You're lucky, I was thinking of putting on my down, then you never would have stopped me and asked to take my picture."
Levi, below Danny, is a guitarist and seventeen-years-old. He was on his way to a recording session. His friend has a large empty loft, well away from the BQE, Williamsburg Bridge and the overhead subway. He is from Bozeman, Montana. He found his guitar somewhere (he says it sounds a bit like a banjo but he likes that). He also found his bicycle, a classic English Raleigh. I saw him whiz by on South 4th Street and shouted. He turned in his saddle but continued peddling. I shouted again and he started back towards us. He said later that he thought we were lost.
Botanica has a new manager, an Englishman, originally from the Islands.
Along with him, two new waitresses of great skill and courtesy.
Braced with a shared Hemingway (that as yet, unbeatable cocktail, the daiquiri), we drove home to Garrison listening to "A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carré. The journey has never gone quicker. The book is a perfectly aimed swipe at the complicity of all the governments fighting the war on terror; riveting characters and suspense.
Together in Red Hook for four years, since she was fifteen and he twenty, this devoted couple live in harmony despite their appearance of being worlds apart. He talks admiringly about the forty and fifty-year-old rockers you can see in Greenwich Village who really know how to turn themselves out. But waiving his left hand in the air he said proudly, "I never go out without this."
Was it last night that made this couple so happy, or the anticipation of brunch? They were laughing when I first saw them, stepping off the sidewalk the other side of the intersection, and they were still laughing as they passed me. In their state of mind I could have waived a red flag at them and they would not have noticed my standing almost in their path with my camera. The last of summer.
At the time I photographed this young thoroughbred being broken in (probably 1955), I was flying cargo planes to Australia for Freddie Laker. We used to have a stop-over in Karachi on the way. In London I exercised polo ponies in Richmond Park three mornings a week and I missed my rides when I was away on the two week round trip to Australia.
