Myrtle and Broadway

We climbed the iron steps to the station of the elevated tracks of the J, M and Z line at Broadway and Myrtle Avenue. The couple disappeared through the brown swing doors into the subway entrance. I thought I had lost them in the free-for-all of shoppers returning home with their bags. But they were standing near the turnstile and had noticed Caroline with our dog Louis and I beckoned to them to come and meet him. They carried no bags. She was there to say goodbye to him. He was returning to Manhattan where he studies Criminal Justice at Berkeley College.

We had to wait for the sun to go behind the clouds. We pressed into a corner on the walkway by the entrance to the subway where the light would be good. Louis and Caroline greeted the shoppers as they banged through the swing doors. At last we felt we had found the center of Brooklyn, a place difficult to pinpoint.

At first she did not want to be photographed because she was wearing sweat pants (I explained it was just head and shoulders). After the shoot, he asked to be photographed by Caroline, with me and Louis.

Christmas tree salesman

First day back in Brooklyn for several weeks. The day started badly. Lunching at the friendly and cosy Boulevard Café on Bushwick Avenue, a young woman sat writing in a notebook at the next door table. Yes, writing in a notebook. When she stared out of the window she looked good, lost in thought. But a fuse box stood out prominently behind her head and I could not get myself in the right place without her seeing what I was up to. I abandoned it and we moved on.

Caroline spotted a man selling Christmas trees from a stall on Broadway. He obligingly gave me his time. If you have a section of sidewalk the length of a sizable store front, full of Christmas trees on December 4th, a Saturday, you do not have much time to clear them.

Couple in doorway

"May I photograph you?" I asked.

She thought for a moment. "Do you work for an attorney?"

"No, I don't."

"That's O.K. then."

A window was flung up and a head appeared. "I'm going to charge you for using the door space."

The couple posed and I asked them to move a little. "Can I punch him in the nose?" And nudging him with her elbow, "Stay sexeee."

Bushwick artist and friend

As soon as people say yes to having their picture taken I start work - always afraid they will change their minds. This means I have to do them more or less where they are standing. However tempted I am to ask subjects to come with me and stand by the magnificent foxgloves in Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, I have never asked, and I doubt if I would get anybody to agree.

I also assume that everyone is on their way somewhere so this cannot turn into a morning's work. I adopt a certain speed but no rush. This couple were on a street with too much distracting contrast in the background. I didn't know what to do. Casting around I spied a good background a hundred yards down the street. All was well: they were going that way.

You can't ask people you meet in the street to go home and change if you don't like what the are wearing. I did like what this couple were wearing though it was puzzling. We have a woman in a summer blouse but a woolen winter skirt and carrying a leather jacket on an 85 degree day.

Bushwick Diva

Every three or four minutes the light from the window that lit my subject faded to twilight as a subway past on the overhead track of the J train on Broadway. Teresa lives with her husband and shares the apartment with two other musicians. They were still asleep in their room because of working late. I crept around the main room taking care not to tread on or trip over guitars, cymbals, tom-toms, wires and microphones that littered the floor.

I whispered instruction, looked at her paintings that she kept in a cardboard box on a high shelf and listened to her telling me that she liked London and disliked America because there was no National Health Service here and it was difficult getting a Green Card. She grew up in Bari, Italy. Her English was flawless.

A young writer outside Café Orwell

He was standing outside Café Orwell smoking a fat yellow cigarette. Was Orwell a vegan? Because the café offers only Soy milk. It's a dark place, five or six writers tapping away at their illuminated keyboards. There was nobody talking to anybody. This man liked to talk. He lived in a hostel round the corner. They would find him a job if they had any jobs, but they didn't have any.

Friends at Boulevard Café

They were pouring over their laptops. I wondered if they were too much though. Just how well matched can you be? But then I thought, no, they really are wonderful. I got up and said "May I photograph you, you look wonderful together." They said, "Why, of course."

Because the light and the background were better at our table, I asked them to move. They wanted to bring their laptops but I liked the cup and saucer and the pepper and salt better. They are performance artist. They were writing the material for their next collaboration.

Off to Brunch

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.

Roberta's best

There is as much to say about Roberta's where this girl works as there is to say about her. Roberta's, for me, has the best pizza in Brooklyn (crisp crust and simple fillings), the best prices, the most pleasant staff and the atmosphere of a place where you feel you will be missing something if you did not go there regularly. The people who run it grow food for the restaurant in greenhouses on their roof. They also have a radio station.

This girl is Bushwick exotic: tattoos, beads, short skirts, lots of color and friendliness, plus much knowledge of where good food can be found in Brooklyn. We missed her the other night when we went. She liked the doorway and lent against it in this languid way without any prompting from me.

Leopard hug

We're talking to Carly (see July 5th and June 9th posting) in Goodbye Blue Monday and this lovely girl with a glowing complexion and tattooed forearm, plonks herself down on a stool and beams at us out of the gloom. She's followed soon by her friend who beams at us too. (Most of the beaming directed at Nicholas who was with us last weekend.)

I think they are both there to help keep the place running smoothly, a bit of waitressing and clearing up etc. Although the whole atmosphere of the place during the day seems more like home to the people there, with Carly doing the work of coffee making and keeping in touch with Matthew, the manager, by cellphone, as to the comings and goings. (See posting June 9th.)

No hand to spare

The little girl was quite content clutching her father's pocket - a little high up, but you can still get a good grip. The man had lived in the same projects in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY all his life and was happy that it was becoming safer and more prosperous every year.

What are these two smiling about?

July 4th, Graham Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, midday or thereabouts - we are on our way to Goodbye Blue Monday. Saw these two on the sidewalk - no traffic to speak of - pulled in - leaped out and up the street after them. Delighted they said. And here they are. But wait - she is twenty-one years old and he is eighteen, and, she told us proudly, she is his great aunt. Work that out! Then his brother turned up. See below.

Adam the gardener

I was thinking recently who could play Raskolnikov. Twenty year-old actors today are too chubby. Adam is too old but he has the intelligence, and the leanness.

I wanted to take him and the girl he was with but she disappeared as we spoke. He tried to retrieve her from the store opposite but she would not be taken away from her shopping. Adam is a gardener and loves borage, as do we. He also dislikes (as do we) Beacon, NY, where he lived for a while but screamed for some genuine urban life and interesting people. So he is back in Bushwick doing lots of people's containers and gardens in Park Slope and around.

He has promised to come and see us in our Garrison haven of greenery and un-urbanness. Hope he does.

Carly and friend relaxing

Carly and a friend having a smoke outside Goodbye Blue Monday. She is almost unrecognizable from the picture I took of her inside the club two weeks earlier. What is it? The clothes, lighting, mood...? We heard The Steve Pardo band with Lindley Cameron playing something swingy and lilting.

Ready for the camera

I was just through with photographing great-aunt with great-nephew when his brother turns up and wants to be in it. Fine, but it doesn't work very well. He, though, is terrific, and I do him alone. With the speed of a runway model changing into the next outfit, out of the blue he finds and carefully adjusts his hat, pulls up his under pants and wriggles down his jeans and stands their ready for me.

Manager of Goodbye Blue Monday

As we walked from the glare of the sunlit street into Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, we could see almost nothing. A lamp glowed here and there and the vague sign of daylight showed from the end of the room. I said, "Too dark for pictures," and left.

Out in the street again, Caroline said that she thought there was a garden and went back in to find out. She returned and beckoned me in saying that there was a garden and we could get a sandwich. The garden, in fact, was a junk yard, containing amongst other articles, cast iron wood stoves, TV sets, shopping carts, hand trucks and welding equipment.

On the left was an open ended shack with a dozen folding chairs in front of a stage, and rough wooden benches down two sides. On one of these benches sat a young man in his robe and pyjamas smoking a cigarette. He introduced himself as Matthew, the manager. He told us he lived across the street and this was a night place, hardly anybody came during the day.

A photographer and his assistant were photographing a model with a head of bushy brown hair that the assistant combed and brushed a lot between shots. When it looked right, the assistant became a wind machine by vigorously flapping a piece of cardboard, no doubt found in the garden, and no larger than an 11x14 print, close to the girl's head. It was remarkably effective and spread the hair just the right amount.

Carly at Goodbye Blue Monday

Caroline not only discovered the garden at Goodbye Blue Monday, but also Carly, who, as an artist, ("I only employ artists here," Matthew told us) had a job behind the bar. The lamp is one that was dimly glowing in the bar as we first entered.

As I was scrolling through the shots on my camera, Carly was looking over my shoulder and after many pictures of people had come up on the screen, she jumped in the air and exclaimed, "That's great." It was a picture of our cat Nutmeg sitting on a log with her tail hanging down.