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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Saturday - a brief musing Italian film of the 60s and 70s

Beginning when I re-watched films by Antonioni a few years ago, I began to notice the geometry of the settings. Important scenes were framed by buildings within the frame of the film itself. Sometimes this gave a feeling of severe confinement or claustrophobia to the scene, other times enhanced the focus or created a contrast between the organic forms of the actors and the hard, angular forms of their setting.

When I took a walk yesterday at the Kensico Dam Plaza in Valhalla, NY I looked at the dam, at the deep rustication of the blocks in its face, of the ornamentation at the top of the dam, at the pavilions at the corners of the walkway, and so on. It is a setting against which most of the activity has to do with exercise or casual recreation but I can imagine it becoming the stage for drama as well.

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Friday - another week of social distancing

It's Friday, it's Good Friday and the second day of Passover. It's spring and fruit trees are blossoming, the narcissus and forsythia are everywhere, but so is Covid-19. Here in Westchester County, there are a lot of cases it not as many as in NYC.

I want to see my friends again, in person if you don't mind.

Are these in keeping with the season, with the holidays and the flowers in bloom?
No, they are part of another series yet to be compiled called "Minor Crimes Against Humanity".

As always, it's in the details.

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Thursday - two more

One high, one low.

The first one has a title: Satellite Dish. The second one does not .

Both shot in and around NYC. There was a time when those rooflines were more common. Corridors around Grand Central Terminal seem to have been of equal age.

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Wednesday - under construction

Continuing the series of posts withou t people, here are two construction scenes at night. The first could be a bit of bubbling lava, the light casting an eerie glow on the dumpster cover. The other looks like a scene of utter and total desolation and ruin, which is sort of what the world feels like right now. Appropriate for this moment in time.

If you are interested in fine prints of any of these, email me at artk at jommelli dot org.

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Tuesday evening's post - two more photos without people

I went to the supermarket to pick up some things we needed. The store was enforcing strong social distancing. There was a line of about eight people waiting to go shopping. The signs outside the store requested only one person per family - no groups. They let us in one at a time - as one person left from the other side of the store, they let another person in.

On the positive side, toilet paper was back in stock. On the negative side, they still didn't have any Vita Herring in wine sauce in the one pound size. On the plus side, there were no lines to check out. On the negative side, hell, there really is no negative to surviving and in small ways thriving.

Here's two more photos, no people included.

I think they are both apt and beautiful In this era of social distancing, we all want to make our mark but at the same time, we order in advance and then we pickup wherever the hell the tell us to.

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Monday - the day after Palm Sunday

I will leave these two for you to contemplate today.

Both seem in their own way to offer a sense of loss and possible redemption. Both were photographed on the streets of NYC late in 2014. The upper one reveals itself when you click on it to magnify it so you can view the details better.

The second is a very sad bear in the trash. 

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Sunday - early Monday abstract images

You might know what it is you might not. It doesn't matter. I see what I see, you see what you see. Did I put those things there, did I superimpose them or did I find them? That's for you to decide.

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Saturday - is posting a pair getting to be a habit?

No reason not to post two more, plenty of time to kill when you can't go out to a show, a reading or even a movie.

Here's two from a deserted Grand Central Terminal, though not recent. I took these a couple of years ago.

As always, hi resolution high quality prints are available. Contact me at artk at jommelli dot org for details or comments.

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Two more- One with a discarded Corona empty

One seems oddly appropriate. The other, lonesome where there are normally people.

Both bring out the geometry of a constructed world.

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Thursday's pair - Momento mori

Today, I need to do something different.

If you've followed me for years, or explored my posts across several years, you know I am a first generation American and a second generation Holocaust survivor.

The first generation of Holocaust survivors is now quite old - there aren't many left and I fear that this new danger, the Covid-19 virus, will be the end for this generation.

In the past week two died. I knew them both well, one for my whole life. I am sad, I am grieving but I go on. Look upon their aged faces and recognize that one day, we all share this fate.

RIP Karl Birenbaum and Teddy Weisbord.

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What two today?

The self-imposed Covid19 isolation continues.

There are signs it will get worse before it gets better.

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Two for Tuesday

The isolation continues. Even when I go out for a walk, I stay distant from others walking near, but not close to me.

And from the archives I dig up photos of things but not people and I post them here.

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Two for Monday - the virus is everywhere

Somehow these seemed appropriate for today.

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Two photos for today

Continuing to browse through photos I've never posted for ones in which there are no people visible or present.

We are living in the era of the Pandemic and social distancing, empty city streets seem to be the new and hopefully temporary norm.

To celebrate, to commemorate, to participate in  a form of extreme social distancing I present a couple more photos.

High quality, hi-res prints are available - art at jommelli.org

Any comments or thoughts are also welcome.

 A lost kerchief, a spring day, Madison Square Park. It was just lying there sort of bereft.

A rather nice pair of shoes left by themselves on the sidewalk outside of a playground in Soho, on Spring St. What happened? Was the party so hot that when their owner changed they were too euphoric to pack them away?

Gotta wonder sometimes.

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