Dancer

Sometimes the camera sees something in a face that merely looking does not reveal.

Ryan again

As his café (it will be his in the middle of January) is the best in Cobble Hill for oatmeal, coffee and lightening polite service, we are swept there by a current of past memories. And you only have to glimpse him and something about his appearance causes you to grope for your camera. Last week it was the red and black hat.

Michele, ace gardener

The tanned muscular arms belong to Michele, who owns, runs and labours at Gowanus Nurseries in Carrol Gardens, where she either keeps or knows where to find any plant you might want.

Blank slate

She and her husband sat next to us at breakfast at Naidre's in Carrol Gardens. He was a photographer and she was a jewelry designer. She wore a signet ring on her first finger which she had designed and left shiny silver where a crest or initial might have gone. I said I liked it and had not seen one quite like it before. "Yes," she said, "A blank slate." She spoke in perfect English with a slight accent from somewhere in eastern Europe, Serbia it turned out.

Man in hat and mac

The hat was the first thing I noticed, then the firmness of push that he exerted on the baby carriage. He was on home duty, it was Sunday, and although he spends the week testing his inventions to destruction at his laboratory, he is more than happy to push and nurture his son on the weekends.

Anything that has to be demolished on stage in a theatre he builds. He tests it to destruction ten times to see that it works properly. "Left it late for the first child."

Poodle walker meets friend

Are they talking dogs?

Tender moment

A day of extremes - high winds, bad lunch, then purchase of Louis's favorite dog food and reuniting with Daniel at Botanica in Red Hook for a Hemingway. Discomfort, annoyance, satisfaction, sadness and joy. It was a sad day for this couple on the stoop of his house in Carroll Gardens but they did not turn me away.

Georgi at Caputo's Bakery

She stepped outside for a smoke as we past the bakery, Caputo, on Court Street, Brooklyn. Been there one hundred and four years - the bakery I mean. Caroline bought a bag of biscotti and finished them before we got home.

Chef in black cap

The sous chef at Naidre's in Carroll Gardens. He was on his break and enjoying the world outside, exchanging the din of the kitchen for the roar of the streets. Trained in Louisiana in classical French cooking with a touch of Cajun, New York City was for him, and here he is.

Beautiful unkept looks

This child and her father had their dog with them and they stopped to let him play with ours. They too were looking for plants at the Gowanus Nursery.

Long hair and short

The nice thing about looking for people to photograph in the street is that it combines well with one's companion (human or canine) who likes to walk and, of course, shop, eat and drink. We find many of my subjects in and around bars and cafés, or shops that we are fond of such as Gowanus Nursery in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Above, we have person A and person B (I seldom ask their names, sometimes they volunteer them), whom I stopped in a flurry of admiration outside the nursery because of their contrasting hair styles.

Today's New York couple

They were standing at the bus stop under the raised section of the F and G lines over the Gowanus Canal. This monster construction on stilts, clad in the now not so fashionable New Yorkers' uniform of its time, black, shelters waiting bus riders from sun and rain. Here we have today's New Yorkers, a banker and his girl friend, whose roots are many degrees of longitude apart.

Carroll Gardens barbecue

I handed the camera to Caroline because I was sitting to her right and did not have such a good view of the tired girl against the pillar as she had. I whispered, "Put the camera to your eye and press the shutter, just press it gently, don't jerk it."

Brooklyn Barbaque

Strong Jaws

It was a cold morning, too cold to think of asking anybody to stop and have their picture taken, so we headed straight for the warmth of Robin Des Bois Sherwood Café. Well, not quite straight as we now have Nicholas's puppy to look after and he needed a walk. During the hour that we were in the café it got much warmer so I took the two friends above outside.

Father and daughter

Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. It was a cold morning and we were glad to be immediately shown to a table by the window at the Robin Des Bois Sherwood Café. As I sat down I was at once struck by the man sitting at the next door table. He was with another woman who could have been his wife, but I never did find out. Also at the table, a young woman who certainly could have been his daughter. Here they are.

3rd Street, Carroll Gardens

A Saturday morning. Imagine this street early Monday morning. As I set up this shot I kept worrying that somebody would come and park their vehicle here.

Jim Galloway, woodworker

We walked into his woodworking shop and he lifted his earphones from his head and said, "Good afternoon." We said, "Good afternoon," and I said, "What a wonderful place this is." He thanked me and asked if I came from England, and when I said yes, he said "but not all of you." "No," I said, "that is quite right because I am half Russian." "White Russian?" he asked and I said, "Yes."

Now, how does a man who works in Brooklyn, lives in Queens, (his family have been there for two hundred years) and who has never left the United States, recognize an English accent that is archaic enough to be in a museum, and then detect something about me that suggests that I am not entirely English. I did not ask, and he did not tell me. He did, however, tell me of a girl who worked at the bakery next door, who had a double headed eagle tattooed on her shoulder and said she was a Romanov (have to follow that up). He was also able to relate accurately the battle that took place between the American and British forces around Brooklyn and Fort Washington, as described by James Fenimore Cooper in "The Spy." I had introduced the subject and described the action inaccurately. Later I reread the passage in the book and he was right down to the last detail.

Claire in the garden

Claire is in charge of the Summit Street Community Garden in Carroll Gardens, a job she inherited from the founder, who now is away quite a lot after she built a house in Santa Fe. This hot Saturday afternoon Claire was there with her friend tidying up and planning next year's changes. An exceptionally large rosemary bush, probably eight feet wide and five and a half feet high is one of the garden's features. As we admired it, she drew her secateurs from her pocket and clipped off half a dozen twigs for us.

I took a photograph with her friend by the rosemary but when she started talking about her life I got this one. Her hands, as we can easily see are never gloved. It is not only the dirt in her finger nails, but the way she has arranged her hands that drew me to this particular shot - one of many where her hands were in the picture.

After Barnard, trying to figure out what to do before graduate school, at the suggestion of an aunt she and her friend started Beastly Bites Animal Supplies. Later, after it became a success, they sold it. Now Claire describes herself as a community activist.

George F. Hamel, III

George F. Hamel, III, financial adviser, his card read. They both had the gentlest way about them. When I asked them to move a little this way or that, they did so without fuss. I asked them where they both lived and they told us. I wanted to ask them more questions but I was afraid to. Something about them made me not want to worry them. We offered each one of our cards. He picked one with a picture of Samuel Beckett on it and Caroline gave her the picture of the couple outside Botanica, because it was another couple. They said thank you and goodbye and continued on their stroll.

After posting this photograph it began to haunt me. The young man has conventional good looks and a serious disposition. He carries a well made looking umbrella. The girl is as unusual as he is traditional. Her looks are rare, her features are imperfect but she is perfectly unusual. Then her clothes: the tattered strap of her bag that matches the frayed neck line of her dress which also has a hole in it; the elaborate but unkept hair, fastened, it appears, by a single hairpin; her nails are polished and well kept in contrast to this untidiness.

I probably could not have asked about these things out of politeness to strangers. What she did or where else they were going that afternoon were more likely questions.