The Satmars take Crown Heights.

Living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn one runs into the Lubavitch/Chabad Jewish community regularly as its their spiritual headquarters.  770 Eastern Parkway, a couple blocks from me, is where their Grand Rebbe/Messiah, Rebbe Schneerson,  lived and worked for the 50 odd years. This sect of Hasidic Jews are Kabbalists and celebrate life at every opportunity (they seem…

Bike Kill of Brooklyn

“TAKE a dash of “Mad Max,” add a pinch of “Jackass,” sprinkle both over a wet batter of art students, bicycle messengers, anarchist welders and militant anti-globalist vegans, then let the mixture bake for, say, a decade in the oven of Brooklyn, and the resulting dish should taste a little like the Black Label Bike…

Up-close and personal.

  In the spirit of William Klein, (modern master of the super close up in a reportage/street photography vein), after finishing my work photographing at an annual fundraising gala for a favorite NYC non-profit, I tried to see how close to subjects I could get without being too intrusive.  It went well.   We all…

Blood and Guts at the Black Flag show in Brooklyn.

I started working with the newly launched  New York Magazine blog Bedford and Bowery, a localized blog covering the Lower East Side, the East Village, Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint in Brooklyn.  The show was epic.  One of the hardest concerts I have ever photographed as there was a pretty raucous mosh pit, my leg was in a…

Rapper Sean Forbes, for HOUR Detroit Magazine.

  I recently had an assignment from HOUR Detroit Magazine to photograph an up and coming rapper from Detroit while he performed a concert here in NYC.  The rapper, who is represented by the same management team as Eminem, is 100% deaf.  He grew up in a family of musicians in Detroit and has carved…

St. Patricks Day in NYC; a wondrous melange of snow, Irish tradition and vomit

It came and went again but this year it was graced with blustery winds, beautiful snow and freezing temps. The side streets around the 252 year old parade are packed with staged parade participants waiting, sometimes hours, for their turn to enter so its a perfect place to meander and photograph. Back on 2nd Ave.,…

Hipsters, Hanger-ons, everyday folk and the like.

Images of concert goers from last summer at Prospect Park and Central Park.  

Film images from J’ouvert festival with the HOLGA

The J’ouvert festival recently unloaded itself unto our weary Brooklyn and it now stands firmly, surely, as my favorite annual cultural event.  Starting at 3am, its hypnotic, rhythmic procession of steel drums and motor oil covered revelers snake their way down Flatbush to Empire then head East.  I realized, while standing in the middle of the street drinking…

Portraits from the AfroPunk Fest

 “I would see more black people with mohawks than I’d ever seen my entire life. You see people who you thought you were the only one of.” -P.O.S., musician The Afropunk fest, (“The other black experience””) an incredible, progressive event partially sponsored by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, took place in late August.  I was so stoked…

J’ouvert mon ami.

I had reservations this year.  Almost none of the neighbors I hang with go on account that its too dangerous, waking at 3 am is strange and I went last year.  J’ouvert,  the before dusk until you can’t stand, West Indian folklore crash course, sexified wine-fest (try this dance when nobody is watching), Nut-cracker, weed & rum…

Protected: Gay Pride in NYC

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Tin-foiled covered kitchens of the Crown Heights Jews.

During the Passover holiday’s of the Jewish religion observant Jews go thru the laborious but important task of cleaning out all and any trace of “Chametz” (or leavened bread) from their home.  And they get VERY intense about it as its one of the greatest religious transgressions if one ingests any bread during the holiday…