black and white – Resonant light

A brief stop at South Miami Beach

We arrived in Miami on Tuesday afternoon. For some reason it took two hours to get the car sorted and then there was the stress of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, so with one thing and another we didn’t see a lot of Miami that first night. Our plan was to drive down to Key West the next day and then come back to Miami after exploring the Keys, but when we got to the hotel we were informed that due to hurricane Irma the Keys were being evacuated on Wednesday and then Miami on Thursday. We managed to have a wander around South Miami Beach before heading out of town. We then spent the next three days driving North and then North West through Florida, Alabama and Mississippi as part of the hundreds and thousands of evacuating Floridians fleeing increasingly alarming hurricane warnings and searching desperately for a vacant hotel room. The little bit I saw of Florida was gorgeous. I would have loved to have spent more time there. The lesson is not to plan a visit during hurricane season. In one shot below you can see some girls on the beach putting together home made sand bags.

Even though South Miami Beach is all about bright, gelato colours, the stark light really seemed to lend itself to more graphical black and white images, which also I think show off the lines of that gorgeous art deco architecture to good effect. These photos were all taken with the Fujifilm x100t.

Marcus Garvey Park

So a mutual friend introduced me to the lovely Cynthia (pictured immediately below), who has lived in Harlem for the last 30 years, and NYC all her life. Cynthia works near where I’m staying in Gramercy Park and was kind enough to come pick me up and take me via subway to a spoken word poetry event in one of Harlem’s historic parks, Marcus Garvey Park. She is a member of the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance (MGPA), and the event was held in order to launch the third lending library box the MGPA has installed in the park.

I’ve noticed that New Yorkers really use their parks – they eat lunch in them, they read, they chat, they jog and ride their bikes, they just sit and soak up the sun – and Marcus Garvey Park seemed to be no exception. There were plenty of homeless people, as usual (every park I’ve been to so far has plenty of homeless people) but also plenty of other adults and kids just hanging out enjoying a cool evening and chatting with their neighbours. On Saturdays, apparently, a whole lot of drummers come together to jam, and there’s also a small farmers market and some community garden beds.

The poets were amazing. Fierce, funny, angry, tender, very witty. It was electric. Not once did I want to cut my ears off with a blunt knife, which I have been known to want to do at spoken word events in Melbourne (they’re not usually one of my favourite pastimes). But these guys were terrific – confident, experienced, clearly drawing on a long history of spoken word craft. I particularly loved Elisabet Velasquez. She totally rocked. But Kraal Charles, Parlay and Iyaba Ibo Mandingo were also great. All were drawing strongly from their identities as African American, or female, or Latina.

Afterwards I went with Cynthia and a few of her friends to eat pizza at a place on Malcolm X Boulevard. The brownstones we passed on the way were glorious, the Boulevard wide and grand. The pizza place excellent. The talk at dinner was of the politics of art funding and how to negotiate the local political tensions between majority Latino East Harlem and African American Central Harlem when it came to art projects. And of cats. And new houses in the country. Someone said at one stage how glad she was that there had been no talk of Trump, for a change.

It was a lovely evening. Good poetry, good food, nice people and a beautiful part of town. Thank you, Cynthia.

The Guggenheim

Feeling like I needed an injection of ‘culture’ (instead of just hanging out in Union Square people watching) I took the subway to the Upper East Side to visit the Guggenheim. This would have to appear on any list of the most photographed buildings in the world. And there are some great photographs out there – many on display in the Guggenheim gift shop. Still, who can resist trying to capture the sensuous yet serious beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece (perfectly accompanied by Alexander Calder’s Red Lily Pads)? Certainly not me.

The art is stunning, of course. And in the collection are two of my favourite paintings, Paul Klee’s Red Balloon and Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition No. 8, neither of which I had actually seen in real life. I wasn’t disappointed. And I was happy to discover Hilla Rebay’s intricate and beautiful collages. There were also two incredible Van Gogh ink drawings (Boats at Saintes Maries and The Road to Tarascon) that don’t get exhibited that often due to their fragility. Standing so close to those expressive pen strokes actually took my breath away. Who knew that sunlight had such vibrant texture.

I prefer downtown though. Park Avenue and 5th Avenue are a different world. Here are the doormen hailing the drivers for the middle aged white women dressed just so with blow dried hair, wedge sandals and big clutch bags, headed out to lunch. Everything is tidy and clean and happening behind closed doors. No sitting on stoops in this neighbourhood.

Coney Island

I loved Coney Island last time I came, when summer was over and everything looked windswept and a little desolate. It was great to see it again at the height of summer, families everywhere, queues at Nathan’s for fried clams and hot dogs, the sounds of people screaming in delighted terror from the Ferris wheel and the Soarin’ Eagle, people everywhere wearing as little as possible and soaking up some sun and some beers on the beach and the boardwalk. Yes it’s cheesy and tacky and outdated, but that’s its charm. There’s something permanently nostalgic about Coney Island. The t-shirts and hairstyles may changes, but the ice creams, the beer, the clams, the sandy rumps and sticky hands and the stomach dropping thrill of the Soarin’ Eagle will be there every summer.

My first roll of film

I’m not a great fan of Tri X – too grainy for me. However it was recommended for the darkroom course because it’s easy to develop and tolerates inexactness in temperature. I could see as soon as I laid the developed film strip out on the light box that I had overexposed pretty much every shot. I also had a lot of shots where the focus was off. No idea why. Usually I’m ok with the Olympus. And then looking at the scanned images I got back from the lab in Manhattan it all looks pretty nasty. I don’t think they did as good a job as Michael’s Camera House back in Melbourne, who perhaps have learned to correct for my deficiencies. There also seems to be a slight light leak, still, despite having paid almost $300 to get Olympus serviced just before I left.

Ahh well. It’s still the first roll of film developed by me since my early 20s and there are some shots that are ok-ish. The first bunch I took on a day trip with some friends outside Toronto and the rest are of Bushwick, around Maria Hernandez Park and Myrtle Ave.