Caroline spotted this young man strolling through the park and was struck by his leisurely manner compared to the fathers (mostly alone) pushing one, two and sometimes three children in a frenzy of rush and disorder.
I had been stuck with an 87 year old with many war stories to tell. He relived for me the terrifying image of standing look out on the deck of a merchant vessel bound for Archangel for two hour watches with the temperature at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit waiting to be torpedoed by a U-boat. "You'd last less than five minutes in those waters."
I caught up with them and made my excuses . "You've got to listen to stories like that, haven't you," the youth said, "You can't just walk away and say you've got an appointment."
We were looking for a background and my subject said, "What about the red wood we just past."
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.
She has a rare look, but it was also the coral necklace and embroidered flower that made this young woman special to photograph. This was a quiet, unfamiliar moment at Provini, not often does a waitress there have the time to sit down. I noticed her crossed hands in repose and her facing out from the bar. Fortified by coffee and prosciutto panini I got to my feet and took the picture.
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.
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.
I found a blank wall away from the throngs of young and old heading for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on the first warm day of March. The sun bounced off the sidewalk and road. Lindsay lives in New Paltz, New York, and got herself a very good degree at Suny New Paltz only to find there were no jobs in anything she had studied so she has returned to school to train as a nurse.
Jesse was a little uncertain about having his picture taken.
"Do her alone," he said, "She's the one."
But I liked them together; she with her woolen hat and he with his shades reflecting the bare trees.
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.
They were on their hands and knees as we past them in their front garden on Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, rearranging their plants in a neat and methodical manner. They had been in the USA since last October and they love it here. She is an engineer and he a school teacher. I was miserable because I was cold and had not been able to concentrate on our own gardening activities, that of buying plants at the wonderful Gowanus Nursery down the street.
"But this is a perfect English summer's day," he reminded me. (Temperature: 58 degrees
Fahrenheit.)
February 1962. A nice moment to see Venice for the first time - mist and rain for three days. Hardly a sole about, just Venetians enjoying the emptiness of their city judging by the spring in this man's step. Others possibly looking forward to the spring hordes.
Holding an umbrella over the camera on a tripod, I shot this in one of the several heavy rainstorms we had this winter. Old tennis balls are now strewn over the field in front of our house to keep the dog exercised.
Hurlingham Club, London, 1980, pre Wimbledon tennis tournament rained out. A few devoted fans who waited in vain to see Borg, Connors and McEnroe. That year, I think it was, McEnroe challenged all comers to the best of three points. If the challenger won, he or she could throw him in the River Thames. Nobody had the pleasure.
Today I launched a redesigned website with this picture on the contact page. The URL of the new site is the same as before: www.kasterine.com
I cannot remember the occasion that I took this picture. It was almost certainly a wedding or a dance somewhere in England in the 1970s where glasses were constantly refilled, and that this woman had an unusually un-English face. I also wonder if curly hair was the fashion then or her own statement.
I remember that it was taken on Ilford 800 ISO HPS film with a Leica. 800 ISO was comparatively high speed for those days and HPS had excellent grain structure and shadow detail.
The interesting bits of New York then - Lower East Side, Soho, Tribeca - had no door bells. Neither were there cell phones, so you either shouted or rang from a pay phone. I can't remember which I did but I remember that that was the easiest part of taking the picture.
I remember being silently furious because I saw at once the picture I wanted to take. In a flash it was destroyed by Ms. Smith tidying up her unmade bed that she had plonked herself down on after greeting me. I said, "Don't do a thing." But she did. She straightened everything out.
After that, I sulked about wondering what to do, and landed up with this.
One of my regular commentators on this blog is a great fan of Ms. Smith's (especially now, for reasons she might disclose, that my friend is considering branching out into the performance art world). I think I would like this post to be a joint effort. "Please Heather, tell us what you have to say."
Couple number one. Bleak day in Newburgh - two boys with no hands, owing to jackets being larger than they were, but, they kept warm. Taken late in the afternoon on our way home.
Couple number two. Leaving a party given by the Russian Department at Vassar College I saw this couple and asked them to stand under the street light. I believe the Bulgarian young woman attended Vassar, but her Russian friend was not quite sure why he was there.
Couple number three. Narrowly missing them as we charged down 7th Avenue in Park Slope, hauled along by our dog on the scent of another, the man thought Caroline was an actress acquaintance of his. She wasn't, but they agreed to a picture, minding rather that I squeezed them into a corner of the entrance to a building to remove their faces from the direct sunlight. "There?" he protested, "That's rather ugly isn't it?"," pointing to the door.
He told us that the photograph pinned to his hoodie was of a buddy who passed away recently.
We passed the sign on the way to brunch at Bar Tano. As impressive as it was I did not want to photograph it because the detail of the light toned brick in the building was distracting. Later, returning from a stroll around Park Slope the building was in shadow. The shadows come from the elevated portion of the F and G trains that crosses the Gowanus Canal.
(History lesson: The canal was too deep for a tunnel to be built under it.)
Tano Bar Saturday brunch. One superb waiter not able to cope with the unexpected crowd calls proprietress for help but first she must feed her children and children's friends. Within two minutes she had her sleeves rolled up, apron on, clearing tables and taking orders. Lovely place and v. tasty sandwiches.
Caroline spotted this young man strolling through the park and was struck by his leisurely manner compared to the fathers (mostly alone) pushing one, two and sometimes three children in a frenzy of rush and disorder.
