New work for an activist’s website

A recent job had me creating new images for the stellar, human rights activist and  radical feminist Farah Tanis. Cool, minimal design by Betta Lang.  Check out the new site here. Check out some of her projects including a museum in Crown Heights devoted to promoting Transnational and Black Feminist histories and traditions as well as this activist…

Work featured in the New York Times. The Lost Rolls America Project

Almost every professional photographer who came up before digital eclipsed analog has something a little bit strange in common and that is, a bag of old film in their refrigerator. Working with film on a daily basis, in it many different formats, professional life mixing with the personal, random rolls of film invariably piled up…

Carnival in Crown Heights

Decided this year to skip J’Ouvert the folkloric musical procession that opens the West Indian Labor Day festivities and just stroll Eastern Parkway, meandering through the almost 2 million attendees.  The smell of bad weed, BBQ and sweat is omnipresent, as is the incredible costumes which root from each of the island’s cultural traditions.  

J’Ouvert in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. New York City’s greatest folkloric festival.

All Text from “J’ouvert in Brooklyn Carnival: Revitalizing Steel Pan and Ole Mas Traditions”. Author: Ray Allen “The rumble of distant drums rolls across Prospect Park, breaking the pre-dawn tranquility that envelops central Brooklyn on Labor Day morning.My watch says 4 a.m.-the J’Ouvert celebration must be underway. Quietly slipping out of my apartment into the cool of…

Post-Pride celebration in New York City.

Reportage from PRIDE late night festivities.

Show at the Society for Domestic Museology

      I am currently showing two series of work (its still up for anyone who wants to check it out) at a cool little gallery on the Upper West Side in NYC.   A series from a baby beauty pageant as well as a series documenting sites where people have been lynched are on display….

J’Ouvert, 2014

My favorite day of the year has come and gone again. I swore this year I wouldn’t shoot like the last three years.   I wanted to just experience it instead of trying to capture it visually, mathematically.  I wanted to stay in the moment. Well, its hard to do after 20 years of working and…

Sky Garden, A much needed Crown Heights oasis.

The roof on my 8 family 4-story Pre-War Apartment in Crown Heights has been a place to garden, eat and chill for the last couple years. We  used to garden in the huge, un-used backyard space but found that it’s north facing position with some big trees didn’t allow enough light to grow food ( it also…

The NYC Pride Parade and WOC lesbian after-party.

I got a great assignment this year shooting the Pride Parade for the venerable NYC non-profit Housing Works.  You can see all of those images here. These are some of my favorite images from the parade.

New portrait for Housing Works

I recently shot the Pride Parade for the incredible non-profit in NYC, Housing Works, which assists people living with HIV.  Here is the first use of those images, a nice portrait for a profile piece.  Eric Bartley, below, has a great story, check it out.  

Sakura Matsuri in Brooklyn: Where cherry blossoms, Cosplay, Autism and acne finally intersect.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens had their Cherry Blossom Festival last weekend and the Cosplay (costume play) that transpired was much more vibrant and colorful than the trees themselves (they actually have yet to bloom).  I wandered around in jaw dropped amazement at this sub-cultures breadth and was shocked to see how its practitioners sat so comfortable in what seemed to…

Pesach at the ER…one mans idiotic exodus into the American Medical System.

Passover on Monday night was pretty incredible. Intimate gathering of 10 people lead by an ex-Chasid turned globetrotting DJ, great crowd, raucous singing, bottomless wine, delicious food, topped off by a tipsy daredevil bike ride with an old Jackson Hole snowboarding buddy in for the weekend and $1 slices. Signing autographs as Bruce Willis to drunken…