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.
He arrived with a canvas shopping bag and told us of his addiction to caffeine
. He talked for ten or fifteen minutes sitting and slouching at a table leaning on his elbows. I asked him if I could photograph him sitting up straight. I adjusted the light so that it put half his face in shadow leaving only his eye lit on the shadow side.
When he left the studio I had the feeling I would like to see him again which, by chance, we did, on a beach in Sagaponack with his wife, one beautiful late summer day.
They were both a great pleasure to talk to. They had their small child with them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of four sisters who love to dance. This is the youngest, twelve-years-old, her mother told us. Photographed at the Newburgh Performing Arts Academy.
I don't remember if Roald Dahl was much interested in film (although he was married to Patricia Neal), but several of his books have been made into movies - very recently: "Fantastic Mr. Fox". I remember him more for his love of wine and food, gardens and talk. He wrote to me when I sent him this picture: "You will notice that this person is leaning at about 30 degrees off the true vertical line. This is a fairly accurate reflection of his attitude to life."
I was lucky. In a normally busy place there was nobody except her, the proprietor and one customer. She sat on the stool, tucked her leg under her and looked at the lens. My Rolleiflex, God how I miss it! But I'm addicted now, foully addicted to the damn digital life.
She was coming straight at me with what looked like an impossible load. It was the angle of her body and the level tray that got me. I said please stop just there. She did - without a waver.
Actress, novelist, critic, biographer and generally loved person for her forthright comments on radio and television in the U.K. She arrived at the sitting perfectly styled for a portrait of actress turned writer. I photographed her another time, I think, because her house was full of things, stuffed animals and junk. Perhaps I found this wall there, outside her house, but... can't remember.
Circling and laughing on a street corner with five or six friends, I spotted this girl amongst the group. I photographed them all together, knowing that they would not allow me to single out one from the group unless they had all been included in a shot. I then asked this girl if I could photograph her alone. I asked the others to leave us for just two minutes and I would be through, and their friend would join them.
A yell from the other side of the street. "I never got my picture." the man said. I crossed the road and apologised. I remembered I had never made a print of it and had hoped I wouldn't bump into him, but here he was. I took another picture of him and gave him my card. This is his friend. I knew I would like him from the start.
Gloom and drizzle descended over Newburgh on Saturday last week. This woman was holding her child's hand, but I liked her alone. I did not tell her I was not including the child in the picture. Her cell phone rang. "I'm here, on the corner of Broadway and DuBois," she said. I had finished and was able to make a dignified exit. I was once interrupted during the taking of a picture by the arrival of a boy friend, and seen off.
The New York Review of Books published this photograph in their December 23, 2010 issue. The article is a review by Joyce Carol Oates of Sunset Park by Paul Auster.
This was the first photograph I took in Brooklyn. It was 1986 and taken for The Times in London. Little did I know that nearly twenty-five years later I would spend so much time in Brooklyn photographing. Twenty years went by before I set foot in the place again and then only for a day. It is also the only photograph I have taken of a well-known person in Brooklyn.
Paul Auster lived in one of those brownstone streets in Park Slope that lead up to Prospect Park, where the houses have steep steps up to mahogany doors ten feet high and thick enough to stop a bullet. He worked in a tiny apartment in a block right on the park - too dull and too small for photographs, but I knew we just had time to do something in the park before it got dark.
I thought this is too good to miss as I looked at the scene through the window of the salon. I went inside and asked if I could take the picture, at the same time fumbling in my bag. My heart sank... I had left my exposure meter behind and I would have to guess. The gods were with me and I guessed right. What a thrill it was when I unrolled the wet film from the reel, just out of the fixer, and saw the correctly exposed negative. You don't get that thrill now, with digital.
Newburgh, NY has many houses without stoops, houses with both stoops and balustrades missing, but in some cases the house, stoop and balustrade are still in place - not many. How this beauty survived on Liberty Street, along with the stoop and the house, goodness only knows. The house was boarded up but still standing. Wouldn't this piece last just five minutes in an Antique shop on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn?Taken wide open on the trusted Rollei, to get the narrow depth of field.More on Newburgh, go to http://www.kasterine.com/newburgh
A corner of our living room needed something. The table top on which the branches and vase stand had rusted through and I had a new one welded on. I'd always liked the table and this is now its new home and a subject for the camera; as long I continue to find things or foliage to put on it. I photographed it soon after I placed the branches there, but a few days later it was much more interesting with the fallen leaves.
The chicken's name is Gravy, a German Spitzhauben, and it was the calmest and most obedient subject - very much due, I felt, to the handling skills of its owner who has ten chickens in all. She designed, and with the help of her father, built a house for them entirely out of recycled materials collected from friends' dumpsters and old materials from their own home improvements. See www.kidsonchicks.blogspot.com
