Archive for the ‘Personal Projects’ Category
Chinatown Valentine – pt. 1
“Men should marry and women should wed!” goes an old Shanghai pop tune. Working in Chinatown over the past few months, I had a couple of opportunities to photograph wedded bliss, and the business of what cynics might refer to as the “bridal industrial complex” definitely commands a big presence in the neighborhood. Wedding outfitters and bridal shops abound, offering a fully packaged experience that will encompass everything from catering hall, decorations, DJs, wedding singers and magicians, to hair and make-up styling for the women and rented white tuxes for the groom, plus of course photographers and videographers to document the special day.
But: before you can get married, someone’s gotta spring the question!
Chinatown Valentine – pt. 2
And then, weddings.
I had heard that Thanksgiving is a traditional day to get married in Chinatown. It’s the one day in the American calendar of holidays when pretty much everybody can get the day off. So, in a parallel tradition to most everyone else in America, the holiday has become a time for immigrant families to gather and celebrate young couples. (And young they are – everyone I photographed this past Thanksgiving seemed to be in their early twenties.)
Welcoming the year of the snake
New year’s resolutions, lunar and otherwise: more sharing / posting of work from this project as I go along. Starting with today’s last minute shopping on Mott Street.
Street Shots / NYC group exhibit at South Street Seaport Museum
Update 01/18/2013: Thanks to all who came out to the rescheduled opening this week, and lost 5 pounds in the sweat lodge dedicated to art and street photography! Fun evening…
And here’s what my little corner of the humongous(!!) installation looked like, made pretty courtesy of J. Kalwa and filters:
Chinatown Blackout update – Knickerbocker Village
Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012: Chan Yin is a home health aide who looks after 93-year-old Liang Xiushi in the apartment she shares with her husband on the 7th floor of 16 Monroe Street in Knickerbocker Village. Without electricity, she is unable to operate Ms. Liang’s hospital bed to prop her up while feeding her, or to lift her out of bed. Their apartment has been without heat, hot water or cooking gas for almost two weeks now.
Chinatown Blackout – A community rallies after Hurricane Sandy
After the lights went out in Lower Manhattan, making a decision on what area to cover in the following days wasn’t difficult. I had spent time over the past few months photographing in NYC’s Chinatown community, slowly getting to know the neighborhood and some people there.
During the four days of the black-out, the community had to made do with whatever improvised resources were at hand. Residents relied on flashlights and candles; high rise apartment buildings lost running water and elevator service, a hardship especially for the neighborhood’s many elderly residents who were stranded on the higher floors. In a linguistically insular community of large numbers of recent immigrants there was an information blackout as much as there was power failure, and many residents were left in the dark as to what city services were available and when amenities, schools and transportation might be restored. Many people in this mostly working class community work in informal and service sector jobs or run small businesses, and they were losing desperately needed income every day businesses were shuttered in the wake of the storm.
A Graying Pandemic project
It’s been a busy summer! This weekend marked the final days of the Governors Island Art Fair installation of A Graying Pandemic,
a spin-off of the ongoing Graying of AIDS project.
For our participatory installation in the Global Village of the XIX International AIDS Conference – held in Washington, DC, from July 22-27, 2012 – the Graying of AIDS team (Naomi Schegloff, Viviana Peretti and myself) worked with adults age 50+ who are living with HIV/AIDS to create a series of photographic portraits and interviews, exploring what it means to be aging with the virus around the globe. View the rest of this entry »
Happy 4th of July – postcards from another NYC heatwave
It’s hot, it’s summer, it’s New York City…. I spent the evening cooling off at Coney Island. No flags, just the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Including a bona fide Saint Christopher of the boardwalk.
Graduation: International High School at Prospect Park
It’s graduation season in New York. A wonderful shoot this week at an inspiring, new high school for “English Language Scholars” – i.e. recent immigrants who are not fluent in English when they enroll in the school – reminded me of these images from a different graduation a couple of years ago.
The Graying of AIDS – an update on new plans and milestones
The first quarter of 2012 was largely dedicated to pushing the Graying of AIDS project forward on several fronts, refining what is becoming a shared multi-year endeavor, with the core team consisting of public health project partner Naomi Schegloff and myself. Several new developments are shaping how we will spend the next few months, growing this campaign beyond anything I could have envisioned when I received the initial support from the Open Society Foundations to create a multi-platform outreach and education campaign for the original Time Magazine reportage.
Wonderful new developments in the evolution of our project involve being granted support from two exemplary independent documentary film organizations: Working Films and Chicken & Egg Pictures.