Queer Liberation March - Proud and resisting and fighting! Part 1

This will be a multi-part post.

This year I had to choose which Gay Pride event to celebrate, the big, "official" event or one of the marches that arose out frustration with the commercialization of the big parade. I chose and I think I chose well.

The Queer Liberation March followed the route of the first Gay Pride Parade 49 years ago, up Sixth Ave. in Manhattan to Central Park.

I arrived at Bryant Park before it reached there and after photographing the marchers and the onlookers, I stepped off the sidewalk to join them for most of the route, until by W. 50th St., the march passed me by.

These photos are selected but not edited. Raw photos indeed.

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In the Eye of the Beholder

I like these pictures.
I hope you do too.
 Look at them and then go to the bottom to see what I have to say about them.
As always, depending on your browser, clicking on one will enlarge it in one way or another.

These four photos are all variants on street photography.
The top image was taken as I rode up an escalator from an underground passage out of a train station. It was morning and only a few days after the scaffolding came down from the newly renovated building across the street from the exit.

The next is a photo of the plaza outside the southwest exit from Penn Station during a snowfall. It shares the presence of a food cart with the previous photograph as well as obscure lighting.

The last two of these photos were taken in art museums.

I go to look at the art yet as I stroll through the corridors and galleries carrying my camera, I think of myself as being inside an indoor park and my fellow strollers sometimes become the subject of the little bit of art I make. There is a small irony in making art out of the place where art is displayed and the people coming to look but "meta" is a contemporary form of expression and even when I'm not thinking about it, this is something bound to pop up.

Photography in the 21st Century has been partially denatured by the ubiquity of the phone cam combined with software which allows anyon e with a phone to take snapshots anywhere but it doesn't make all of them into photographers.

Look at these photos and tell me they are the sort of things you imagine.--

If you are interested, art-quality prints are available for sale. Inquiries welcome.

 https://kayester.blogspot.com/2019/06/in-eye-of-beholder.html

Street Portraits #1

One of the things I am is a street photographer.
Sometimes I shoot things, sometimes those things are buildings or objects or landscapes.
Most of the time I take pictures of people.

Here are three photos I shot several years ago in Manhattan.

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Not quite a Miscellany - Eateries #1

One of the benefits of having a large back-log of unselected and unedited photos is that when spending time reviewing them, going back 10+ years, I find some I can't believe I never did anything with. That makes me start thinking about whether I have more like them and I open my eyes to looking for something barely paid heed to before.

The four photos that are here fall into this category.

All of them are of places that are best described as eateries.

The first is one of those places that when you find it you immediately are glad you did. It's the Crossing Diner, located adjacent to where a the Finger Lakes RR tracks on the west side of Seneca Lake crosses NY Rt. 14. Over the door on the outside a sign forbidding complaints. The only complaint I had was that I couldn't eat there more often.

The next photo is of the Star Diner in White Plains NY. It is a leftover from another era - a true railroad car diner. The people who run it are friendly, the food is exactly what it should be, and that makes it very good. They treat every customer as if he or she is a celebrity and that, in this day and age, makes it worth a visit, not matter. Bring cash if you go, they don't take credit cards.


Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, across from the Flatiron Building, is another throwback. They have two slogans, "You either get it or you don't," and "Raising New York's cholesterol since 1929." I agree. It isn't world class haute cuisine but it is something you just don't find in Manhattan, or the other boroughs for that matter, an authentic New York City luncheonette. They don't stay open late enough for the dinner crowd, but lunch is served until they close. Recently they acquired a new owner who was quoted as saying he bought it because he loved the place and wants to keep it the same.

And then we come to an exterior shot of an East Village, Manhattan pizzeria. The photo speaks for itself.

Still hoping to raise money toward upgrading my equipment:
www.gofundme.com/photographer-needs-to-upgrade

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Miscellany #5 - finished rebuilding the RAID

It's been a month since my last post and the principal reason for this was my RAID, which started acting up. It was both a simple problem to fix and time consuming to do.  But now it's done.

Here's a selection of photos I've chosen for this post. Enjoy, and if you are interested in prints, they are available. Also, I've got a campaign to upgrade my photo equipment: https://www.gofundme.com/photographer-needs-to-upgrade

I think most of my street photographs have this in common: they catch a moment of drama, whether intentional or not doesn't matter. Sometimes it's the way the people are juxtaposed but not interacting. Other times there is interaction that somehow seems staged or posed but I know that it's not. On the streets of Manhattan there are more moments than can be measured. To quote the last line of an old movie: "There are 8 million stories in the Naked City..." Here's a handful. Please feel free to add your own dialog.

A couple of comments on these:

Early morning in Manhattan means coffee carts. This was taken near Madison Avenue at 8:42AM NY Coffee Cart time. Only the woman in blue looks like she's up and at 'em and ready to kick some ass.

Since this is Manhattan, the crossing of paths by diverse individuals is inevitable. The Mitzvah Tank is a signifier that the man in black with the long beard is a Lubavitch Chasid. The person in saffron passing in front of him possibly a Buddhist monk, though considering the date of the photo - I shot it in the fall of 2014, he might be a fake monk because there were a lot of them that year stalking the streets of the city proffering a good luck charm and then demanding $5.00 for it. The Chasid wasn't seeking donations. He was in the business of trying to get his co-religionists to do something required by Jewish religious law.  What I also liked was how the woman and man were both plugged out and seemed to be deliberately avoiding contact with both religious men.

She isn't still but she isn't moving. Is she waiting or leaving? I don't know. I feel she is trying her best to seem unaffected, above the fray, but hoping the right person will come here way, and soon.

A pause in their conversation. What did she say, what will he answer?

And finally, one of the odder moments of a day. There is no way the beard is real and that left eyebrow looks like it wants to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Yet the woman gazes at him intently, though I cannot guess her intentions.

 Permalink https://kayester.blogspot.com/2019/01/miscellany-5-finished-rebuilding-raid.html