Woman enjoying life

Cigar smoking, cookie eating, happy as a lark woman, outside 84 Diner in Fishkill, NY. I wanted to go somewhere big and busy. Here it was, the diner I had passed a hundred times on my way to Newburgh, where the parking lot is always full and you get exactly what you expect in huge quantities, served by waitresses who weave through the tables and past each other at the double. A granny, with a tender hold on her grandchild's hand is given, with a reassuring smile, the right of way in this whirlwind traffic of nimble plate carriers, as the waitress stops dead to let her safely through.

Flawless Brooklyn Heights

They'd lived in Brooklyn for 40 years... Where else?

Esther Williams, bar owner

"I get in at 9.30 every morning. The bar maids get in at noon. I am eighty-three and I have cancer."

Earlier, Esther was outside her bar supervising the delivery of supplies. Caroline asked her if we could have some water for the dog. She beckoned us in and produced a large Tupperware full of water for Louis and put it on the floor for him.

She has owned and run The New Casablanca for forty years, more than twenty of those years with the man she eventually married. "One New Year's Eve he asked me - I thought he never would."

Her husband died eighteen years ago. She hunted the shelves and cupboards under the bar and brought out her wedding album. "I get it out every so often." It was a large white leather book with sewn gilt borders on each page.

She thought Bedford Stuyvesant was still neglected by the city. In the last election Mayor Bloomberg got fewer votes in her district than any other. "He ought to come and see us more."

Man from Jamaica

He was outside his apartment building on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. "Take it!... Take it!" he said, "and send me a copy." To the question of where he was from originally he replied, "Jamaica, and that's not Jamaica, Queens".

Canal lift operator

His name was Charlie and he operated the Anderton Boat Lift. He was brought up on a barge on the canal where his father operated the lift before him. He had pneumonia three times because of the damp, he said. The lift provides a 50 feet vertical link between two navigable waterways: the River Weaver and the Trent and Mersey Canal in north-west England.

The picture was taken on the best colour film Kodak ever made: Kodachrome II, the sharpest, the most natural saturated colours under any lighting conditions, and you could expose it for half an hour and it wouldn't change colour. This is a recent scan from the original.

The Last Vice

Stan Rubinstein is a pianist but no relation to Arthur. I sat down next to him on a bench outside the restaurant Building on Bond in Boerum Hill. His wife told me that cigar smoking was his last vice; she has eliminated all others. Jazz is his first love but he doesn't play much these days as his left hand is a bit stiff.

"I'm a tough old Jew from Brooklyn and nothing is going to get me down."

Gentleman on Myrtle Avenue

Meanwhile across the street, Caroline spied a gentleman in a hat. He spoke no English, but he understood that I wanted to photograph him. He did not want to move from the spot where we saw him because he was waiting for the bus. I found this slit of sunlight shining through a gap in the overhead rail tracks only a few feet from where we were standing.

The bus came and he beckoned us to ride the bus with him. We wondered whether he wanted our company or did he think we too had been waiting for the bus.

Zio Antonio

Zio Antonio, Caroline's great uncle, taken in an abandoned stable in Malvito, Calabria, Italy. My favourite light, a four foot square of window, and my favourite color transparancy film, Kodachrome 64. Above all, a subject that the camera likes: a lean face, a steady gaze, open eyed, and the self confidence to say, this is how I am.