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.

Waitress in profile

This is a waitress at Dizzy's, a very good diner in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY. She reveals all at once patience, helpfulness and long-suffering.

Youth Holding a Rosary

We parked on Lorraine Street which runs through the projects in Red Hook. We'd heard about the wonderful food the street vendors sell outside the ball park. Anyway the streets were active which is more than you can say for the swankier streets of Red Hook, which are sometimes quite empty.

I spotted this youth as I stepped out of the car. I saw his back view turning a corner on the path into the projects. I ran after him and shouted just as he was about to enter the building. While still some distance off I waived my camera and as I reached him said that I wanted to take his picture. He stood there and I said, "Don't move, stay just like that," and he did. Caroline had meanwhile caught up with us and gave him a card and we said goodbye and thanked him very much.

I was very happy and we went to Botanica and had a cocktail and met a friendly couple. He had that morning been to B&H and bought a point and shoot Leica, which seemed like a nice camera. She was English and we got on to the subject of Pimm's which we all agreed we liked. I had first known about Pimm's at the age of about six in 1938 when my mother drank it mixed with gin and garnished with a slice of orange, cucumber and borage leaves. She and her friends drank it on summer evenings on the terrace of our house. I would crawl under the table and look up at some startling sights. It appeares that it was quite normal then not to wear very much at all under your flowered cotton dress.

Steve Martin

Because a number people have asked about him, I am posting my picture of Steve Martin.

Time: the late eighties. Place: our loft on Lafayette Street, New York City. The buzzer rang. I answered it. "It's Steve Martin", the voice said.

"Please come up. Ninth floor."

I waited at the entrance to the loft, wondering nervously what the size of his entourage would be. How will I get them all out of the way. Out stepped Mr. Martin from the elevator, dressed in a trilby hat, tie and blazer... alone. No agent, publicist, friend, lawyer, body guard, or wife.

Once I asked a writer who came to a shoot not to talk to the subject while I was photographing him, but he persisted, so I asked him to wait, please, downstairs, in the coffee shop. He was furious. I like not a soul present when taking a photograph. After all, I wouldn't interrupt the writer if he was writing or interviewing.

Mr. Martin drank some coffee, liked it, made polite conversation, telephoned his wife about the purchase of a painting and never made a funny remark or told a story. He disappeared to the bathroom three or four times. He complied with my directions from behind the camera with absolute exactness.

As we saw Mr. Martin off at the entrance to the elevator, one of us asked if he liked cats. "Oh! I love them, why?"

"We weren't quite sure what to do." Caroline said. "We have three. But in case you didn't like them we put them in the neighbor's apartment for the morning.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, the English painter, would be one hundred years old this year. I am posting this photograph a little late in the day, as his exhibition has already been seen in Madrid and London, but it has turned up at the Metropolitan Museum here in New York this week.

I took the picture in the late seventies. When he arrived at the studio, he sat down in front of the camera and fell asleep. He did not mind at all being woken up and stayed awake while I took the picture. He had an especially pleasant voice and gentle manner.

Touching Hats

Here and below are lovers. Different generations and less ardour in one than the other but both equally touching. Here I asked if I could take their picture but said very little. They were happy to look at each other. This was taken in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY.

Russian American relations

These lovers were taken at the Russian department's V-Day dinner at Vassar College. The young man, Andrew, is Russian and his friend, Michelle, is American. They have one thing in common with the "Touching Hats" : their lips are about the same distance from each other. The older couple's lips stayed at this distance; these two continued forward toward each.

An accident waiting to happen

As dog owners go this man is a good one. He warns you as you approach him not to take a step nearer as his dog will bite you. This, of course, may not be true; he may just not like strangers addressing him. But he agreed to being photographed.

He was sitting outside Tillie's in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY.

Mother, child and friend

This group were sitting next to the man with the dog at Tillie's . (See above.)

Nurse Temptress

As I walked down the street I noticed a girl who was standing with a group of other people. I stopped and said hello. It turned out she was with her sister and nephew and their neighbour. The neighbour wondered if what I was carrying was a telescope. I told him that it was a tripod for my camera, and I use it to ensure the pictures come out nice and sharp. I extended the legs of the tripod and screwed the camera on the plate to demonstrate. Then I asked the girl if I could take her picture and she agreed. We had to cross the street and walk half a block to find some shade. She told me her name was Temptress and that she was a nurse at the local hospital.

To see more photographs of Newburgh click here.

Couple in Tillie's

No one living in the New York area will forget April 25th, 2009, the day the temperature rose to a blissful 85°, warming the body and the cockles of your heart, after the interminable period of this winter. The couple, however, would not have noticed if the temperature was 105° or 0°. I saw them as I left Tillie's, the café with a good feel and a wobbly table in Fort Greene in Brooklyn. I took one shot on the D40. (Probably could have stood there for ten minutes before they noticed me.) I had the camera set at 1600 ISO and on automatic, with the focal length between 35 and 24 mm.

Stylish young man

The style was what got me. I took two frames and tried to find out who he was but the noise of the traffic prevented me from understanding a word he said. It was taken outside Cooper Union in New York City.

Chef Depp

Cheeky and good. Brooklyn is full of good young chefs who work at places you want to go to because the food is perfectly all right and the people are fun. The Building on Bond in Boerum Hill is designed, built and managed by the owner who decorated it with metal furniture out of factories, vintage books, scales and bottles.

Also you can set up your office at an eight foot long table. Electric current to recharge ailing laptop batteries is available from an old pull down reel affixed to the ceiling. Charming staff. And what were those two woman sitting opposite each other smiling about, as they stared into their machines and typed for half-an-hour, laughing, but not saying a word?

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."

Girl in a red hat in Café Regular

Thank you, Heather, for once again steering me in the right direction, and Happy Birthday! I hope you spent it in as romantic surroundings as Café Regular in Park Slope, Brooklyn.


On a drizzling Saturday afternoon we entered this tiny place and found ourselves the only customers. The waitress was reading a book at one of the four or five tables but immediately rose to her feet and ducked under the counter through a hole in it. The flap could not be raised as a show case of pastries was on top of it. The waitress said nothing, just waited for us to order and then quickly produced our coffee and tea.

People soon came in and either perched on the narrow bench or ordered something to take with them. I particularly loved the window because it was misted up. You could not see the cars and the not-quite-6th-Street-houses outside. We sat and dreamed.

A school-girl, Haifa, Israel

This was taken in the mid-seventies on a trip to Israel, and I am posting it in response to Andrea's comment about smiling photographs.

(See comments about "Teenage Couple", below.)

Rainbow at Botanica

Sometimes there are important characteristics in people that you cannot show in a portrait. There is something missing from this photograph, and it is that you cannot see that she moves with extreme grace and lightness.

We had landed up at this delightful place by chance. We were talking to a young woman on the sidewalk outside who was applying gesso to some canvasses, and the proprietor of the bar joined us and asked us in. He was a perfect host and the sandwich was delicious.

He told us that he bought the three story brick building twelve years ago and that it was a burnt out wreck. "I restored it myself."

"Are you an architect?"

"No, an engineer."

Gesso girl

This is the young woman who brought us into the Botanica bar. Sunday was sunny and warm in Red Hook, but the sun was too high and harsh to take her with her canvasses and gesso out in the street where we found her. I took this in the shade on the other side of the street after being fortified by the Botantica's sandwich and expresso.

Weekdays she sells designer doorknobs in Soho.

David Hockney in Paris

I recently heard that the National Portrait Gallery in London want to acquire about twenty of my portraits of writers and artists that I took while I was living there in the seventies and eighties.

Here is one that I took of Hockney at his Paris studio in about 1975. I remember feeling very at home in this courtyard of his studio.