A steady gaze

Here's something for the New Year—the steady gaze of a child.

Joy Setton at Fort Defiant Café

This is a photograph of a stranger, but with the help of the staff at Fort Defiant Café in Red Hook, Brooklyn, I discovered that it is the writer Joy Setton. I took the picture a couple of summers ago and have since read her articles in Taki's Magazine. One that particularly struck me was about money in the art world from fifteenth century Florence to today. Amongst other aspects of banking then and today, she writes about usury, the origins of bankruptcy, letters of credit, how much gold a woman could wear, and, "Bankers in fifteenth-century Florence were so wealthy that even rulers envied them."
Click here for article in Taki's Magazine

Beacon shop keeper

Main Street, Beacon, NY. Store owner takes a break to fix her hair and have a smoke.

Contentment at Homespun

As the world knows, every other person in Beacon, NY is a refugee from Brooklyn. Our acquaintance who makes cowboy boots and children's shoes, and who recently moved into a loft in Newburgh (across the river) said, "When you can't afford to live in Bushwick, you know it's over." I wonder if these two once came from Brooklyn?

An hour before departure

Caroline wondering if she won't cancel her trip to Italy because she may miss our dog Louis too much. She is sitting on the bench that I brought over from England 25 years ago and was nearly destroyed by a tree breaking it's back during a storm. It was put together by a local welder and I replaced the seat slats and repainted it. 

Paola

Caroline has gone to Southern Italy to see her aunts and cousins. The next five photographs were taken in 1989 when we were both there.

Before she left on her trip, I said that because I won't have to take her and collect her from the bus that she catches to commute to White Plains, I must make good use of that extra hour a day. "Re-calk the bath and put up the towel rack." she replied.

Carlo and Monica with friend

I was photographing this young couple when we heard the tap and shuffle of cane and slippers. A man in a white shirt appeared. He spoke to my subjects, engaging them so that they no longer were paying attention to me. I asked him if he would like to join the group for a photograph. 

Grandfather

Caroline's grandfather spent more 20 years of his life in Brazil, away from his wife and family. When he came home to Malvito in Southern Italy, every day he walked the mile to the church and back. This was up a very steep hill. He was 99 years-old when he died.

Marta

In the stables of the Baron's house. Plaster walls, virtually never to be seen here in the United States, now seldom seen in Europe. Light from a 5 foot square window. 

I have used as a studio, since this was taken in 1989: the stables here, Sandy Saunders hayloft and the carriage house that is my current studio. All locations thanks to the horse. 

Waitress

A portrait from 1989 in Malvito, Italy.

Natalie Forteza, singer

I have always liked being chauffeured by a good driver in a nice car. This happened to me last week when Natalie Forteza turned up to be photographed and gave me a lift to the studio. She had a small Volkswagen SUV. Plenty of room, smooth ride and quiet. Shan't be happy till we get one. 

On the telephone Natalie had said, "I have asked my younger sister to meet us there—just to give me moral support." She turned up precisely at the appointed time, sat on a hay bale, out of sight and as quiet as a mouse.

Girl with short hair

A fine day with a clear blue sky. We hear the sound of a light aircraft approaching. It comes into view at about 2000ft. Three bodies tumble from the plane. Three parachutes open and steer towards our field. They land, gather up their 'chutes and walk towards us.  We recognize two adults and a girl of about fifteen. The woman is clutching two bottles of Bordeaux, and the girl a skateboard. Before we made lunch and opened the bottles I took this picture.

Matt Alexander

Mayor of Wappingers Falls, NY, Democratic Congressional candidate for 2012. When asked where his favourite view of the Hudson River was he replied, "From a place in Cornwall, the classic view... they all painted from there in the 19th century... I grew up in Cornwall... You can see Anthony's Nose and Storm King."

Family group

The suit does not mean that our son Nicholas has joined Goldman Sachs. He was back from California for his aunt's wedding and had to dress accordingly. It was more than my life was worth not to record this, as we seldom see him in anything as formal.

A rare gift

Karen McCormack discovered that animals liked to talk to her when one morning she left the house and a hawk was sitting in the drive. Karen approached the hawk and saw that she had a carcass in her talons. The hawk was dragging it slowly away from Karen but she reached forward and tugged it from her. The hawk released the carcass as though she were giving her food to Karen. "I have just shown you something about the way we live," the hawk whispered, and flew away.

Karen began her intuitive life when she did Tarot readings, but soon gave it up because her clients became a nuisance by ringing her the day after their reading and complained that nothing had changed.

Lone croquet player

The London Column, an online pictorial report from the life of the city, are publishing this week some of my photographs taken between 1964 and 1980. Here is one of a lone croquet player at the Hurlingham Club.

 

Blue, check and pink

They arrived in a '90s Corolla, drawing up at the kerb beside us on Liberty Street in Newburgh. The girl with bronze hair sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard. She smiled. She said she had a son. "Where is he?" "With his father." A third person appeared from the back seat. We wandered around the street looking for somewhere to take the picture.

The young man, a fashion stylist who lived in East New York, Brooklyn, pointed across the street to a background he liked. I wanted the church doors where they would be lit by the sun reflecting off the buildings opposite. The young man said the particular church was not his religion but he did not mind if we used the doors.

They liked our dog Louis. Caroline took a picture of Louis and me with the three friends.

Felicity and Anna

As we were chatting about my temporary studio—the potting shed at the Garrison Institute that was probably once a carriage house, I looked towards the place where I wanted my subjects to stand. A toad sat there. We stared at him for half a minute and he then lazily hopped on to the bricks and disappeared under one. He did not reappear so we got on with the photography.

Massage therapy

We were looking for an unused or disused industrial building in Newburgh NY in which to display my photographs of the city next summer, to coincide with the publication of the book. We passed this young man having his shoulders massaged.

Man of purpose

Indeed. 15 or so years ago he started Grey Printing in the sleepy old town of Cold Spring, NY, full of musty antique shops. Grey Zeien, then still running an advertising agency in New York City, moved in the latest printing, copying and scanning equipment, and employed Ruth Eisenhower, who is still there. Over the years Ruth decorated the place with four by six color snapshots that she took of everybody who came into the shop. They are strung overhead and stuck to every wall—thousands of them. Ruth adds to the collection each week.

Grey sold his agency a year before the tumble and devotes his time to advising people on their perfect binding, cards, signs and banners. and to his art, recently displayed in neighboring Beacon, and permanently on view at his online gallery, which you have to wipe you brow in relief at seeing a website so simple and beautiful in design.