Photographing MOMA Photography Curator, Susan Kismaric

When photographer Barbara Leven called and asked me if I would photograph Susan Kismaric, the photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with a conference PWP, (Professional Women Photographers), plans for March when Ms. Kismaric will be the keynote speaker, I was humbled, gratified and a little anxious. I would have felt a bit more intimidated and apprehensive about this assignment had I not taken this photograph of Lesley Martin, the editor of the prestigious publication, "Aperture" last year for the exhibition, “Faces of A Village”, in Long Island City.
My assistant, Alex Kotlik and I arrived at MOMA on a recent Tuesday morning when the museum is closed to the public. Having previously scouted the museum for the best places to shoot Susan, I knew that I wanted some photos at the Bauhaus Stairway. However, I felt compelled to start out in the iconic Sculpture Garden, even though the light was a bit contrasty. With Alex manipulating the reflector, we got a couple of good shots outside with Susan sitting in the open shade.

After we went inside, I recognized that I had an immediate problem. I had discovered, the day before, that my husband, who took my Canon D10 to shoot a project that he was working on in California, accidentally took the battery charger for my Nikon. I knew that I was low on battery juice, but I thought I would have enough power for the shoot, with my two batteries having half-lives. It turned out that one of the batteries actually had no life at all, and so I was left with one battery half full (or half empty, depending on how one looks at these things.) Having told Susan that I wouldn’t take up more than an hour shooting her, I squelched my apprehension and got on with the job at hand.

What a joy it was to walk through the galleries, with no one around, surrounded by some of the most fabulous works of art on the planet. Susan told me that it was one of the perks she most enjoyed while working at the museum. The light and background in the galleries was wonderful and Susan seemed pretty happy to be sitting and looking pretty, so before we moved on to the Bauhaus Steps, I got these in.

I knew I still had enough battery life to get a few in the Bauhaus Steps and and they turned out to be Susan’s, PWP’s, and my favorites. This is the one that Susan liked best, and PWP will be using this for publicity purposes.

Thinking it would be a good idea to just get a couple of shots in the Photography gallery, I managed to get off a few frames (that I did not use) just as my battery died. So, a couple of lessons learned: watch what your husband takes away with him, and don’t panic (which I didn’t!).

Photographing Rose Fazio, a 100 year old resident of Long Island City

In the fall of 2008, Diane Hendry, who ran a gallery called Art-O-Mat, in Long Island City, New York, asked me and another photographer, Alexander Richter, if we would photograph some of the residents of Long Island City for a show that would be on view from February to April in 2009. Diane was a long time resident of the area and she knew most of the people very well. She loved many of these people, and, as I began photographing them, I fell in love with them too.

This area of New York City is an amazing mix of teachers, artists, musicians, blue-collar workers, community activists and many others who spend a surprising amount of time with each other doing all kind of interesting things. Many of them live in humble but very interesting homes, some of them having lived there all their lives. Rose Fazio was one of these people. She lives in the house she was born into, one hundred years ago. I decided to photograph her in St. Mary’s church, a couple of blocks away from her home. I later found out that although her two daughters regularly attend St. Mary’s, Rose is less enthusiastic about church going. Nevertheless, she agreed to go with me there. When I picked her up, she was all dressed up for the occasion with her rhinestone earrings, her lipstick and her perfectly coiffed hair. We spent about an hour and a half in the church, walking around, finding the best places with the most flattering light, etc. She was very relaxed, and yet she had intensity in her clear blue eyes that I thought was amazing. She didn’t tire until the very end of the session and later on, when I showed her the photographs that I made of her, she seemed very pleased.

Prospect Park Peaks

Last Saturday I marched along with the Brooklyn Little Leaguers as they inaugurated the opening on the 2010 baseball season. Afterward, as I walked around Prospect Park, I thought, Today, right at this moment, it is peak season in the park. After this, we can look forward to the three h’s….hazy, hot and humid. But let’s not get carried away. Right now it is heavenly. All the fruit trees are in bloom, as are the magnolias, dogwoods, elms, redbuds, locusts, yellowwoods, sycamores, forsythia, and daffodils. I’m a tree hugger, I admit it, but tell, me, how can one not be in love with these magnificent specimens, and they’re right here, in our beautiful backyard. Thank you Tupper! We will miss you, but we’ll always have the promise of spring in Prospect Park.

Photoshoot: Up On The Roof

Recently I photographed Isabel Hill, an architectural historian, urban planner, and filmmaker. She needed some new photos for her website. Normally, my assistant, Alex Kotlick, will accompany me on a shoot like this, to help me carry my gear and, primarily, to help me with lighting. In this case, we were going to shoot outdoors and all that was needed was someone to hold the reflector. Unfortunately, Alex, who is a great assistant and a terrific photographer in his own right, couldn’t make it, and so I’d have to deal with the reflector myself. After making some photos in Isabel’s backyard with her adorable pup, we decided to head on up to her roof. Isabel wanted some urban architecture to show in the background. We went up on the roof and amazingly, there was a beautiful built-in reflector right there, a silverish painted surface on the roof that reflected the overcast sky perfectly. Sometimes the photo gods are good.

Gowanus Update: Ooze Makes News

On March 17th, the Daily News reported that one person’s idea of what to do with the Gowanus Canal’s toxic sludge is to turn it into organic glass cubes, which could then be turned into something useful, such as aquariums, or building blocks or sculpture. Or, as one can see in some buildings in the area, it can be made into decorative glass bricks. These photos I took recently show just how beautiful they can be; more are on my Gowanus Impressions series album.

Photoshoot: The Berkeley Carroll School

I have a long happy history with the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn. My son, Benjamin, attended BCS from the 2^nd grade thorough high school; my nephew, Henry, attends BCS Middle School, and this year I have been hired to photograph events and shoot candids at the school for their print and website.

I love The Berkeley Carroll School. When Ben was in school, I was in the PA, went on many trips with the little kiddies (learned right quick to take Ibuprofen before getting on the bus), served on many committees and, in the last years, was a proud Parent Ambassador.

So when word went out that the school was looking for a photographer, I jumped at the chance, and I’ve been enjoying myself ever since. I hadn’t been back at the school since Ben graduated in 2000, so walking the halls, seeing old faces, catching up with people, and making new friends and acquaintances has been very rewarding. Most of all, though, photographing the kids has been pure joy. Brings back all the memories, particularly when shooting the sports events. My first assignment for the BCS was to shoot a soccer game! Wow. Like I hadn’t done that thousands of times before? This time, however, my heart wasn’t in my mouth each time someone from the opposing team took a shot on goal and I was able to concentrate on the task at hand. This week I shot the school play, “Snow Angel”, that the MS kids are putting on, opening tonight. These kids are too cute for words, and happily a picture tells a thousand words, and all I have to do is show, not tell.

Citizen Joyce

I don’t know what you’ve left behind in your hotel room (the other sock? Bamboo papers? Dental floss?) but how about leaving an entire drawerful of tops, bathing suits, and lingerie, which is what I did. And then, amazingly, after a few weeks and a few different people handling all this stuff, getting it FedExed to my door by the Good Samaritan whom I shall refer to as Citizen Joyce, a woman who lives in a remote town in Missouri. Well maybe it’s not remote, but it’s Missouri, you know? Now that I’ve stopped reading the newspapers and stopped listening to NPR or, more importantly, the morning BBC broadcasts, I can pretend that the world east of NYC is inhabited only by Good Samaritans such as Joyce.

This is what happened. After having stayed at the aforementioned B&B, Cascadasdemerida, in Merida, (see my photos, above) the capital of Yucatan, Mexico (a great B&B with fabulous breakfasts) I received an email from Ellyne Basto, the proprietress, telling me that I left my things there. She said she would wash them and then see what she could do about getting them back to me. Wow. Luckily for me, everything was clean, thank god, so at least I didn’t have to worry about her messing around with my dirty laundry. Ellyne did manage to bring my things to a hotel where she knew a couple that was going back to the States was staying. She handed it over to some guy there, who said he would give it to this couple (Citizen Joyce and her husband). It was hoped that Joyce would send it to me upon her return to Missouri.

For a while there, no one really knew if in fact the couple actually had my things and it wasn’t so easy to contact her. But, in fact she did send it to me, at a cost to her of $10.70. After thanking her profusely in an email, I told her that I had put a check in the mail to her to cover her costs. She emailed back, asking me not to send her a check, that she would be insulted if I did, and that “so many people were nice to us on our trip and I just want to pay in forward”. I guess that’s how they say it in Missouri. (Or maybe it’s Missour-ah). Any way that you say it, it works for me.

SuperNews!

The NY Times reported today that the EPA announced that it has officially placed the Gowanus Canal on its Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. The Agency has determined that adding the site to the Superfund list is the best way to clean up the heavily contaminated canal.

TaDa!!!

Our mayor, and potential developers of this site, have cried “foul” when confronted with the EPA’s plans, saying that the residents of the area would be greatly damaged if their property was deemed a “toxic” site. As if everyone doesn’t know that the site is toxic. In fact, the Gowanus Canal Conservancy was formed in 2006 specifically to lobby the EPA to make Gowanus Canal and the surrounding land a Superfund Site in order to work towards a “beautiful, historic, green, recreation destination”.

This is very good and welcome news. Over the past few months as I have photographed Gowanus, its inherent beauty and uniqueness has opened itself to me. Although I have been photographing the area for many years, it has only been recently, as its fate weighed in the balance, that I have been happy with the results. Perhaps it took this crisis for the area to open its secrets to me.

One of my photographs is here on this page, some of the others may be seen on my Gowanus Impressions web page. Happy Day!

"Ya Gotta Have A Blog"

There was a time, in the distant past, when all I needed was a camera and film. Then about a decade ago, I was told, “ya gotta have a digital camera”. Being a right-brained computer-intimidated person of a certain age, I resisted for as long as I could and then finally “went digital” and the flood gates have opened and all the “ya gotta haves” have rained down on me ever since. After I launched my website (another “ya gotta have” of course), I was told many times, “ya gotta have a blog” which fell on deaf ears. That is, until today, when I went to a workshop titled “Digital Social Marketing” and the guy who ran the workshop, Dorian Benkoil said, (well, you know what he said). Of course, I knew what he was going to say when I signed up for this because I had already capitulated in my mind. This is a digital age and I’d have to learn to live with it, and use it to the best of my ability. So here I am, armed to the teeth with all kinds of information that will take me decades to learn and understand. My not-so-secret weapons, of course, are my son and my husband, two very savvy guys who utilize both sides of their brains to great effect (albeit sometimes quite annoyingly) and who will be tickled pink to see this. If I play my cards right, they’ll help me get through the morass.

It has been said that I need to improve my SEO, or search engine optimization. Sounds fine, of course, (I love throwing those technical terms around even if I don’t know what I’m talking about….) and that’s what I want to have happen. All the neat things that I see my son and husband do when writing their blogs don’t come easily to me. But I must widen my network, bring people to my websites, and get on with the business at hand in order to increase my SEO and my business! Then, perhaps sometime, in the hopefully not-too-distance future, I can hear myself knowingly saying to someone, “Oh! You don’t have a blog? Ya gotta have a blog”!