Thursday - dull dreary day, windy and showers bleh

Another day, more social distancing, more feeling isolated. Bleh bleh bleh. And not the sort of day for going for a walk anywhere with a camera.

So a few more or less random photos from around Pleasantville NY.

The first two were taken in the parking lot of the Thornwood Town Center, a small mall anchored by a ShopRite on one end and a large CVS on the other. It was a grey day with occasional drizzles.

The three people in the top photo were celebrating a friend's 40th birthday as best people can celebrate a birthday nowadays while exhibiting appropriate caution. The two on the left, a couple, the man standing about 6 feet away, a friend.

She said she wished her friend's birthday was the day before, because that had been a very lovely day in April indeed. But they were enjoying themselves, hats and balloons and all.

In the middle is the line of shoppers waiting their turn to be allowed into the ShopRite. Patience, covid-19 is your nickname.

The last is lichen. Shot near the Pleasantville Pool.

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Wednesday - still April but not much sun

Yesterday's walk at the Kensico Dam Plaza - in Valhalla NY for those who never heard of it - yielded a few nice photos.

There's a memorial to the residents of Westchester who died in the terrorist attack of 9-11-2001 called The Rising. I've been photographing it on and off in varying seasons and lights for many years, never published any of them. I don't know why. But now, when more than 60000 people in the USA have died from the Covid-19 virus, I think it's time to both take new photos of the memorial and to publish some.

The memorial is tucked into the northeast corner of the plaza near the winding stairs that lead to the road on the top of the dam. It is both away from the center of action so it seems a bit isolated, almost an afterthought, but it also makes its own place where contemplation and meditation on things such as our own mortality, are possible.

Yet there is plenty of foot traffic since it is at the end of the ramp to the walkways along the base of the dam and people making the circuit must pass it, so it is not a lonely location.

To give it some context, I'm also including a photo along the base of the dam. It's struck me that there should have been more people, walking in groups.

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Tuesday - a lovely day in late April

Finally a day worth going out and enjoying the spring air, the coolness in the shade, the warmth in the sun. I went for a walk late in the afternoon and it was great to stretch my legs and stroll.

A couple of pictures for today, day the umpteenth of the Covid-19 crisis.

Remembering a snowy winter and how things looked at Hawthorne Station early in the morning. A lonely commuter trudging along the platform, the view from the platform toward the houses on Commerce Street.

Lonely, chilly but not grim.

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Monday - Is it spring yet?

Another dreary drizzly chilly April day of social distancing.

I know that April showers bring May flowers and all that, and the daffodils and other naricissi are blooming all over my yard, a robin is nesting in the rhododendron in front of my house - three eggs and a bird that shrieks whenever I get too close, but I want it to be warm and dry enough for me to sit outside already.

Photos.
I've been fascinated by this corridor for several years. I've taken more than a couple of photos in it, and here are two versions of two of them. I can't decide if I like it better in monochrome or color. They offer different feelings, different mysteries, but neither overrules the other.

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Sunday - chilly, rainy, April still socially distancing

During the summer or 2014, this graffito was showing up in Midtown Manhattan. I saw it painted on fire alarm boxes, traffic control boxes and mail boxes, among other places. I guessed it was an artists attempt to get noticed but I never saw any notes about an artist painting what I think are rabbit ears, though the bottom one looks more like a very odd upwardly directed bird's bill, anywhere.

It wasn't exactly like Banksy and his amazing notoriety. Rather just a glancing, fleeting moment of visual punctuation in a mostly noisy environment.

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Saturday - finally feels like Spring

Today was a lovely day - sunny, the temperatures moderating into the 60s, a perfect April Saturday. Imagine how good it would be if we weren't socially distanced from each other, if we could eat in a restaurant instead of curbside pick up.

So to the photos, a few to remember the winter that wasn't since winter 2019-2020 was mild and lacking in snow.

Who misses crossing a the street by leaping across a wide slush puddle of undetermined depth, of bundling up in a foreign city with you digital video cam strapped to your winter cap, or bundled up against a cold so fierce your face froze into a grimace?

Thanks Spring, now if we could only say good by to Covid-19.

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Friday - a chilly, drizzly day in April - sunny photos

I used to work in an office across from Madison Square Garden - one of NYC's truly ugly buildings. Inside were hosted, in more normal times, the home games of the NY Knicks and the NY Rangers. I happen to like both of those teams, though I can't think of team that breaks its fans' hearts more often than the Knicks, except maybe for the Mets and Jets.

The rangers, on the other hand, have been contenders even if it's been a long time since they brought home the Stanley Cup.

My office was also a pleasant walk from Madison Square Park, which shares a name if not a locale with the arena. Are those joyful eaters tourists or locals?

The third photo is taken across the street from the park. A bit of meta-photography.

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Thursday - still social distancing

It's been a mostly cold and wet April and though the daffodils are up, the forsythia is in bloom and the trees are flowering, it doesn't feel like spring yet.

So here are a trio of winter photos from Bryant Park nine years ago.

I have to admire the woman selling kettle corn, waiting for the next customer with her paperback book, her faux fur hat and the fingerless gloves, staying warm and avoiding outright boredom.

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Wednesday - digging back a few years for something beautiful

The winter of 2011-2012 was a snowy in the NYC area. I was working near Bryant Park and I took many photos in and around the park. It is often very cramped at that time of year, with the ice rink taking up the lawn, the winter holiday booths lining the paths, and the additional cafe/warming areas built near the rink. On a snowy morning, it was possible to find something close to solitude.

There is something very right about a crown and gauntlets of snow on Gertrude Stein. What has she been waiting for so long that she let the snow build up on her?

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Tuesday - Bryant Park Jan.2011

This pair is part of another series I've been working on but have not yet compiled. 

The subject of the first two is pretty clear - other people taking pictures. The top one has two things that are notable:

1. The large format camera on a tripod

and

2.Bryant Park and there's nobody else in view. I did not crop this picture. This is appropriate in this time of social distancing.

The third picture is there just because I like it and looking at it made me feel good.

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Monday - Stay alert - two more photos.

It's time to be alert, and on the lookout. Urban portraits ask the question, what is that person thinking? But it isn't always a person. And what are they looking for, or at?

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Sunday - Winter 2011 Manhattan

This is the sixth Sunday since I started to socially distance and self-isolate. Whether or not I have been ill with the Covid-19 virus is undetermined since I have not been tested, but I might have had it in the first half of March.

It's getting tiresome, being largely confined to home when I am well. Except for a daily walk and the periodic visit to the supermarket, this is where I've been. I could put far more photos up that the couple a day, but that is what I've chosen to do because that is how I feel.

But now it is time to stop limiting myself to lonely photos of objects, or places without people.

I like taking and looking at the candid shots I've taken, mostly on the streets of NYC, but not by any means exclusively.

Here are several from 2011, a more normal time. They are part of another ongoing series, Street Portraits. They often are a little out of focus or a little under or over-exposed because to grab the shot I saw with the camera still down, I didn't always have time to get that perfect exposure or clear focus. But the shots still came out the way I want them.

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Saturday - moving forward with three photos

Today I opened up a file with photos I took nearly 10 years ago. The folder's photos were taken in late December, 2010. NYC and the northeastern USA was hit with a very heavy snowfall. I remember it, and remember many of these photos but I've published very few of them.

Anyone out there remember that storm or its aftermath?

Tonight, I break from what I've been doing the past few weeks and show the people who have been the central theme of my photography.

Tonight, three photos of two people working in the same place - the Bryant Park ice rink - but separately and a Zamboni.

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Friday - two more from Kensico Cemetery

Another week of social distancing. What a clumsy sounding activity. Even if it didn't describe anything else, it sounds like a form of alienation.

You can't be more socially distant than when you are dead and buried or interred in a crypt - would that make you encrypted?

The line from a Romantic Era poem under the stain glass shepherd are apt to the era they are from, but now seem anodyne, saccharine. Yet I hope they gave some solace to the people who chose to put them there.

Both of these are from Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla NY.

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Thursday - self isolating, social distancing goes on

There have been nearly 15000 deaths in NY State attributed to complications from the Covid-19 virus. There have been more than 220000 confirmed cases. It's highly contagious, spreading from person to person, mostly through the act of respiring, including coughs, sneezes, heavy breathing. In Westchester where I live there have been 668 deaths so far among the nearly 22000 confirmed cases.

So why do I not hang out with friends, acquaintances and strangers? 

Two more photos. You figure them out.

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Wednesday - still self-isolating

Not much changed.

Something about an above ground crypt - a family having a tomb of its own, sharing that space for a very long time, all in deadly silence.

What came first?

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Tuesday - still no people

The pandemic drags on. We seem to lack responsible leadership at the top: nothing is ever his fault, and if he said it and it was wrong, well then he didn't say it. Scares me.

Two photos - one a winter scene at night the other a funerary statue on a grave in Kensico Cemetery.

I'll probably add more from Kensico cemetery.

In the era of Pandemic Furloughs, the offer to sell fine prints stands.

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Monday - posting a little late

I know, it's Monday morning but yesterday was my first day of being furloughed from my daytime job because of the Covid-19 virus epidemic and I spent too much time working my way through the NY State Unemployment Insurance website to get my claim in.

So here are two for Monday and later today I'll get two up for Tuesday.

And if anyone is interested in purchasing prints of any photos I've posted here, today or anytime, email me at artk at jommelli dot org and I will give you prices depending on size, limitations on number etc.

These will be fine art prints suitable for framing.


The upper one is the aftermath of an accident, the final indignity inflicted on a long-deceased, stripped to its skeleton bicycle. It's part of the yet to be compiled "Minor Crimes Against Humanity" series.

The other is an old, non-functional fireplug along a path above the east bank of the Hudson in Sleepy Hollow NY.

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Sunday - not the new normal

It doesn't matter how long it's been, it's still not normal.

Today is the last time I will post only photos without people. Beginning tomorrow, I will start my own thaw. Tomorrow it might be time to start building again.

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