rss feedWest Village | Corner Bistro
10:
Leica M6 TTL, 50mm Noctilux, Agfa APX 400.
Corner Bistro, West Village © Doug Kim
Union Square | Buskers
07:
Nikon D300, 35-70mm Nikkor, SB-800 Speedlight.
Buskers, Union Square © Doug Kim
Union Square | Free Cocaine
posted by doug on 2010.03.06, under New York City
06:
I was standing outside Steak Frites on 16th Street, smoking a cigarette, waiting for my friend to come out when a well-dressed gentleman exited the restaurant and asked me if I wanted to take some coke off his hands. Sure. Why not? Those days were long over for me but free is free. Coke is just the rich man’s coffee but I have rich friends that wouldn’t have minded a gift bag. He said that he had too much and that he and his wife were fighting. He palm passed it to me and on cue, his wife appeared and gave me the stink eye.
Free drugs on the street. What kind of town is this? But no worries. On the way to meeting my friends in the LES on Friday night, I actually lost the little glassine bag and my Klipsch ear bud headphones somewhere on Houston near the F train.
What a moron.
Free cocaine. Someone got a gift on Houston St. last night
André Kertész | Landing Pigeon, New York, 1960
04:
André Kertész | Landing Pigeon, New York, 1960
This was taken around 59th Street where they had demolished the houses, and I saw a pigeon flying in and out. The original idea for this photograph dates back to my days in Paris, where I also saw some old run-down houses and wanted to photograph them with a pigeon. But the pigeon never came. Here in New York I sat and waited. Time and time again I went back to the same place, but it was never right. Then one day I saw the lonely pigeon. I took maybe two or three pictures. The moment was here. I had waited maybe thirty years for that instant.
-André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész
Terry Richardson | Jim Carroll
26:
Jim Carroll by Terry Richardson
Excerpt from The Basketball Diaries:
Summer 65: Fucked up yesterday, lost our last game in the summer 15-and-under league up at George Washington High School, and that deuced us out of the championship game today. We had a good squad, mostly cats from down the block in the projects but they had a rule that no Varsity players could play. That ruined our chances of using big Lewie Alcindor even though he’s from the neighborhood and all. I mean, shit, most of the teams got ringers but it’s a little difficult to sneak in a seven foot All-Everything cat onto a court. He can’t exactly use a fucking pair of sunglasses, dig? So I go up to watch the game today and pick up my trophy for the all-league team and what a hassle is steaming as I bop into the gym. THE SUGAR BOWL ALL-STARS, one of the teams playing, are in a rage bitching about the ringers on the RUTGERS team. So true! those cats didn’t have a dude under eighteen running for them, none of them played school ball, but they were some of the best playground players in Harlem. I walked over and was rapping to a few friends, Vaughn Harper, an All-American from Boys High, and Earl Manigault, a Harlem legend of 5 ft. 10 in. who can take a half dollar off the top of a backboard. He’s invariably on and off his school team because of drug scenes and other shit. These two cats are, with big Lew, the best high school players in the city. Finally the captain of SUGAR BOWL points over to us and tells the other team and the man who runs the gig that if they’re gonna use that team, that their team’s gonna use Harper, “Goat” Manigault, and me. The bossman axes the idea of letting in Harper and “Goat” but says they can use me, which is fine with the other team who don’t even know who the fuck this white boy is. Before I say a fucking word I get a uniform tossed in my mug and since there’re bunches of chicks in the stands, my new team mates are huddling around me and I whip on the shit and start warming up. Big fucking difference I’m gonna make ’cause we need leapers for the boards and no backcourt dude like me. Anyway the slaughter starts and I’m hitting long jumpers like a fucker (I gotta say that I always burn up that gym, something about it that I just can’t miss, crazy) so we’re holding our own by the half and I got twenty-eight points, each move of which I make sticks out like a hardon because I’m the only whiteman on the court and looking around, in the entire fucking place, in fact; my bright blond-red hair making me the whitest whitey this league has ever seen. So in short we made a good show for a team our age, but can’t keep up with the other dudes and lose by ten, but that ain’t bad and I got myself forty-seven points and at least got to play for once with these cats I’ve always had to play against in various tournaments since Biddy League days. Then to bust all kinds of balls, the bossman gets some college scout in the stands to testify the other team got at least three ringers he knows and we are awarded the champ bit. After the gold is handed out and all (I didn’t get a trophy for the game ’cause they were one short and I had to say “fuck it,” but got an outofsight plaque for All-League), we go in a corner and pose a team picture for the Harlem paper, “The Amsterdam News.” We’re waiting for the birdie to click when the photog calls over the SUGAR BOWL coach and whispers something to him who then walks over to me and mumbles, “Dig, my man, don’t know how to say this but for, well, …” I cut him short and told I got the message and stepped out of the pix. I guess I would have messed up the texture of the shot or something. Or maybe they didn’t want to let the readers get to see that the high scorer was a fucking white boy.
-Jim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries
Merce Cunningham Dance Company | River to River Festival
18:
Shot with a Leica M6 TTL, 35mm Summicron, Kodak Tri-X.
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rockefeller Park © Doug Kim
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rockefeller Park © Doug Kim
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rockefeller Park © Doug Kim
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rockefeller Park © Doug Kim
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rockefeller Park © Doug Kim
André Kertész | New York City, 1979
17:
André Kertész | New York City, 1979
Everything that surrounds you can give you something. Last summer I stayed in my room most of the time and I began playing around with things. Years ago I was given a little primitive Polaroid camera and I didn’t like it–it was for snapshots. But one day I took it out. I had discovered, in the window of a shop, a little glass bust, and I was very moved because it resembled my wife–the shoulder and the neck were Elizabeth. For months and months I looked at the bust in the window and I finally bought it. The lady in the shop said, ‘It’s a beautiful bust, sir.’ ‘I know,’ I said. And I took it home, put it in my window, and began shooting and shooting with the Polaroid camera–in the morning, in the afternoon, in different lights. Something came out of this little incident, this little object. They made a book of all the pictures I took. It is dedicated to my wife. Look how the face of the bust is always changing: a shadow, which is the shadow of the curtain, then a passing cloud.
The sky and its reflection give it the expression. I didn’t arrange this thing–it was “there”. Photography cannot make nature more beautiful. Nature is the most beautiful thing in the world. You can show the beauty, illustrate it, but it is never the real beauty–very far from it. We don’t know how beautiful nature really is. We can only guess. I am always saying the best photographs are those I never took.
-André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész
Coney Island | Stillwell Ave
15:
Shot with an M6 TTL 0.58, 35mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X 400.
Coney Island © Doug Kim
