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New York City Based Architecture/Interiors and Portrait Photographer

The downtown portraits are moving along well. Recently we paid a visit to artist/photographer Dietmar Busse’s studio on Lexington Avenue, had a look at his work and his new book, then climbed up to the rooftop to shoot this portrait.

If you don’t know Dietmar’s work you should:

Dietmar Busse

A studio visit is a must and perhaps you can’t leave without falling in love with one or more of his pieces.

Dietmar Busse on his rooftop in Murray Hill

Dietmar Busse on his rooftop in Murray Hill

While the Single Story Project is moving along well we’ve also undertaken shooting on a project nearly a year in the planning – the Downtown Portraits

In this project we are photographing long term residents of downtown Manhattan, artists, writers, musicians, shop owners, weirdos, the “creative types” that were drawn to NY’s downtown neighborhoods and have held root here making their homes and withstanding the forces of gentrification that have been smoothing the culture these neighborhoods were traditionally known for.

Like Single Story this project is shot on black and white film in a large format view camera but for this series we are shooting 8×10. We like portraits on 8×10 film : )

Mary on Bond St

Mary on Bond St

 

Tammy and Evan on East 4th St

Tammy and Evan on East 4th St

Tammy on East 4th St

The Photographer Capturing Downtown New York’s Single-Story Buildings — Before They’re Gone

As cookie-cutter condominiums and starchitect-designed towers continue to crowd the Lower Manhattan skyline, try the photographer Adam Friedberg, a 25-year resident of the East Village, sovaldi sale has pledged to photograph every single-story building remaining in his downtown community. “They open the street to the sky, providing a vista that can be enjoyed by all of us,” Mr. Friedberg said. Inspired by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Mr. Friedberg catalogs the negative space created by these “low riders,” before the gaps they leave in the city’s landscape are filled in and forgotten. — JAMIE SIMS
Here, “3 St. Marks Place,” 2016.

Adam Friedberg

We’ve been working very hard all spring on the Single Story project and have a lot to show for it as you can see in the grid below. We’ve shot 15 locations to date and with at least 35 more identified so far who knows when it will all be done. Many thanks to all who have helped and supported in so many ways.

Single Story Project to date

Here is the Artist Statement for the project:

The last fifteen years or so have seen an enormous increase in the development and construction of new buildings in New York City, especially in downtown Manhattan’s East Village, Alphabet City, Lower East Side, and Bowery neighborhoods. Previously, buildings greater than six stories were less common between the Financial District and midtown. Today, it seems, tall buildings are sprouting everywhere, with little regard for existing fabric.

As a twenty five year resident of the East Village, I have witnessed these changes. And as a longtime architectural/environmental photographer, I am compelled to document them.

Among downtown’s new starchitect-designed towers and the ubiquitous six-story tenements that have long characterized my once working-class community, there exist increasingly rare specimens: buildings of a single story. In a part of the city that’s never been chic or sleek, these low-riders blended in with their tenement neighbors, but now stand as outliers—oddballs even. They no longer “fit” their surroundings.

Of particular interest to me, and in many ways this project’s point of germination, is the negative space these single-story buildings create. They open the street to the sky, providing a vista that can be enjoyed by all of us. With air rights, sunshine, and city views so valuable, and with the polarization of wealth having a direct impact on the area’s demographics, how much longer can these squat buildings stand?

The purpose of this project is to create a series of photographs that document every remaining single-story building in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhoods, bounded by Broadway to the west, the FDR Drive to the east, 14th Street to the north, and Canal Street to the south. The photographs are made without people to allow the focus of the work to remain on the buildings and their surroundings. They are black-and-white images to emphasize the forms and negative space.

I am recording each of these single-story buildings in this transitional time before they are replaced and forgotten, their corresponding negative spaces filled in. It is my intention this series will become a historical document, that it will be collected and published in book form.

I am employing traditional analogue photographic processes: black-and-white, silver-halide-coated sheet film shot with a 5” x 7” view camera. The negatives produced will be printed at both contact size (5” x 7”) and enlarged (16” x 20”).

This method of shooting sheet film in a large-format camera is one I have used since I became a photographer.

Single Story is inspired by the work of August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Lynne Cohen, Joel Sternfeld, Ozu Yasujiro, and Wim Wenders.