Tag Archives: #Brooklyn

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Sometimes a bit of Pretend Makes it Real

I like to write in layers.

The surface is but the top of that parfait.

When I need to find ground, it helps to pick up a camera.

When I’m lost, I need to travel back to a special place.

On this September Day, I needed to be back long ago.

My links to it were memories of a trip in August 1981; a black EMD end-cab diesel, and a old Brooklyn Eastern District sidetank steam switcher.

I was seeing each of these things for something other than what they are.

My reality wasn’t very good that day, but at least I made some photos.

Too often the differential between how we want things to be and how they really are, results in our disconnection with reality. Sometimes that disconnect leads to delusion; other times it is necessary to get through the day.

In the end, the old little blue engine is unlikely to ever work the Brooklyn dockside again.

Tracking the Light Explores Railway Photography.

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

M-Train near Coney Island

In April 1984, I traveled with my brother Sean on a whirlwind trip through Queens and Brooklyn on the New York City Subway. This was during the graffiti era when most of the trains were covered inside and out with tags and ad-hoc murals.

I made a series of photos on this adventure using my 1930s-era Leica 3A (with 50mm Summitar lens) loaded with Kodak Plus-X, which I’d bulk loaded into re-useable cassettes.

On the way to Coney Island, I made this view of an inbound M-train from the front of an outbound train near the ‘W. 8 Street’ station .

While some small prints of this trip that have populated my 1980s photo album for the last 40 years, the original negatives had been waylaid until relatively recently. Finally, I located the missing original photos and scanned them last weekend.

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