The air quality is so good before the summer makes it into something to be warned about, when it holds heat, pollution, and humidity over our heads, hanging around for days sometimes, before continuing on out to sea. During those times, the atmosphere’s pressure feels like the massive weight it really is. I can’t think straight in humidity; it takes up too much mental bandwidth.

After the summer is good, too. The departure of the those awful, heavy days leaves a light-feeling autumn behind, a good sort of void. And while, as the days get shorter and the temperatures begin to dip, some brace for seasonal melancholy, I think more clearly, and selfishly enjoy the transition.

Clutter

I used to walk this street in Williamsburg almost daily, on my way to a job that, for the better, I no longer have. I don’t think this clutter was here back then, but the light of this sunny spring day made it appealing, throwing long, sharp shadows. Only in Williamsburg could this plastic Jersey barrier, sitting mysteriously useless on the sidewalk next to a Nissan, collect stickers like a pier collects barnacles.

The picture took itself

Earlier this month, there was a series of days when the light was so good, the photos took themselves. The aperture ring turned on its own, the shutter-release pressed itself, the film advanced and did it all over again. Long, crisp shadows told it to, and I held on.

Scottish parade

I have a bad habit—or it seems like it should be a bad habit—of regretting things, or wishing I had made a decision differently. Not unusual, I know. And I know one should be careful what one wishes for. There must be many stories, reiterated over the years of oral traditions since illiterate ancient times, that highlight this point in lessons with varying degrees of harshness. But as my perspective on cause and effect is limited to the parameters of a life lived in the first person, in a physical world, my imagination, my ability to imagine other decisions and other outcomes, also exists within these parameters. And so it is possible, unfortunately, to feel I should have done differently.

This past-facing, useless view burns energy, confuses sleep patterns, and makes it more difficult to look forward to things in the future. My future-tense language hardly gets used in this season, and my head fogs, feels filled with styrofoam; I’ll allow it to be filled so, in as much as anyone can allow what enters ones head to be there.

I took the first photo at a parade honoring New York’s Scottish community, which I happened to stumble upon one day while wandering through Midtown looking for something else. Bagpipe music and tartan were everywhere. The parade’s Grand Marshall was a Scottish actor, who I’d never heard of, who stars in a streaming show I’d never seen. Many onlookers gathered against the aluminum barricades that lined the parade route, yet I suspect many of them were equally wondering “who is this famous man?”

On a walk in LIC

On a walk in Long Island City, Queens, which can fluctuate so quickly from charming tree-lined brownstone streets to a mix of gritty industrial roads and strip malls, I found an old Mercedes that reminded me of my childhood.

The first cars in my memory, as I became aware of the concept of a vehicle at some point around the age of four, in the mid 80s, was my parents’ black Volvo 240 DL and a what might have been a blue Buick station wagon, though I can’t be sure of the latter. When I was 17 I bought a secondhand 1990 Lexus ES 250, which I drove and meticulously kept up until I left for college a few years later. When I was 29, in 2011, I bought a Honda hatchback brand new, with a manual transmission, and a sports-package upgrade. I loved that car and put over 30k miles on it before I had to sell it in 2014, while I was in a particularly tight financial period. Although that period passed many years ago now, I’ve lived carless ever since.

But I remember those old boxy Mercedes, with their mono-wiper, asymmetrical side-view mirrors on the A-pillar, and optional diesel engines. I still want one. And I like knowing there’s still a few knocking around out there. One day, in some distant, suburban future, I’ll have a garage and the by-then “classic” Mercedes sedan I admired in my younger years. I’ll fix her up and spend way to much money on her, deeply impressing the four to seven other guys like me who care about such things.

Ongoing studies

I’m finalizing my plans for an artwork using the UN headquarters building as its subject, though of course, changes happen after things are underway. It will involve maybe six photos of it.

The structure itself would be totally anonymous in Manhattan’s skyline were it not, I think, for its placement, that is, separated from the island’s architectural density. The separation is really negative space—probably a hundred yards or so along the north and west exposures (due to First Avenue and a generous setback that I assume exists for security reasons), and a vast amount of space along the south and east (due to the a small park and a notoriously vacant lot, and the full width of the East River respectively). But that amount of air and sky makes it stand out like almost no architectural properties would.

The simple monolithic form is intriguing to me. Its dullness and its reflectivity make me think of how it photographs over times and in varied weather conditions. But somehow I think this work best by being limited to the summer. So let’s see what the season brings over here on the East Side.

April ifs

UN-adjacent

And some areas near the UN building, which for a while have seemed a bit shabby. Even a long section of FDR Drive’s 42nd Street offramp (not pictured) has non-functioning streetlights, leaving the crumbling road in peculiar darkness given its location. It’s noticeably—and, in some seasons, preferably—cooler over here by the river, relative to the artificially warmer weather of Manhattan’s interior. One day I’ll remember this and reflect on it as something from this point on the timeline, which made things feel a certain way, and which gradually yielded to another era.

UN Studies

I see this building from 1948 almost everyday, due to where I live in Manhattan. And I can’t help but think about the UN’s obvious relevancy to that time, the principles it stood for after the end of the war, and how they feel distant now despite having my personal support. The building itself, such literal a monolith of mid-century design, out there on its own on the banks of the East River, fenced off from the rest of the city, says I’m still here, but very much of a certain time.

These 35mm photos are studies for an artwork I’ll make this summer; I think the building’s simple recognizability will make the perfect subject.

The snow receded

The ubiquity of windows

It is obvious to point out the ubiquity of windows.

Midtown canyons

A few frames from my nearly daily walk across Manhattan to my studio or elsewhere, camera sometimes in hand. This time of year, light seems to do its thing best 10º–35º above the horizon. Golden hour happens at the upper floors; it’s doesn’t really reach down into the Midtown canyons. And honestly, depending on the day, sometimes it is annoying to stop and take pictures.

Introducing “Notes on the Visible”

In my work—for example in my Woven Portraits, Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs, and Attempts at resolution series—months and, often, years pass between initial steps and final results. During these stretches of time I execute heaps of pre-planned work and dialed-in, meticulous process. And the results’ perspectives often speak in formal tones, from a third-person perspective.

Naturally, I enjoy working in this way and plan to continue doing so; the dialed-in, meticulous process and the advance planning-out of research, photoshoots, materials handling, logistics, etc—that’s all very me, and I’ll likely never change. However, I feel my practice has been a bit unbalanced in some ways, as I am also pulled towards making more spontaneous, informal, and open-ended images that perhaps speak from a first-person position.

So here it is, a new project: Notes on the Visible. Here I’m going to post photographs (strongly leaning analogue) and probably also some sketches that provide ballast (at least for me) to the other side. I think it will exist as more of a score than a catalogue, and it should not be overly explained. Please follow along (here as well as on Instagram), sit back, and listen.

Belated studies

Last month, around New York, on yet another expired roll of 35mm film. I dropped off this film at the lab in Brooklyn, with time to spare, but, one week later missed the pickup time buy minutes, as my train from Manhattan was racked with delays. As my schedule these days allows only a weekly trip to Brooklyn, this put me behind considerably. Daylight Savings Time has come into effect since then, we have “sprung forward.” Since these photos were taken, springlike temperatures even crept into a couple days a couple weeks ago, and, though I’m certainly not one to shy away from cold-weather photography, I can understand the photographic draw of places like the American southwest, with its mild temperatures and ample sunlight, and the romance of its vast spaces.

1st Avenue

More camera tests along 1st Avenue, near the UN headquarters, pre-snowstorm. New York’s architectural salad bowl has its moments of Mid-Century purity; the real deal shows decades of wear to be sure, but always ages better than its derivatives.

Snowstorm

Earlier this month—around my birthday, always the coldest time of year—I tested the new Leica with a roll black and white film that expired seven years ago, and nature gave me a subject that never fails to pique interest: a snowstorm. Going for a short walk in the snow, I took some photos steps from my building in Turtle Bay, Manhattan.

When I was a kid, these storms happened; they canceled school, buried parked cars, and spurred the digging of trenches. But these days, here in New York, the storms are infrequent, occurring maybe once or twice every few years. At least, that’s how it seems to someone who grew up near Lake Michigan.

I like that one must accept what nature wills. If a blizzard comes, there’s nothing to be done about it. The city, for a day or two, quiets down and softens its edges. The pace slows and expectations of prompt productivity lower. We North Americans hold ourselves to those expectations all the way to the end.