New York Sleeps (as photographers stay awake)

The April My Project for Popular Photography, a feature on Christopher Thomas' long-exposure Polaroid Type 55 series "New York Sleeps," is up now online at PopPhoto.com.

In the neverending (till it ends) film v. digital debate, Thomas had a few great points in the interview; first, that wandering around the city with a large-format camera commands a certain respect or type of authority that you get less often taking pictures with the latest Canon DSLR. (This didn't, however, stop drivers from parking in the way of his camera.) And that having immediate Polaroid prints on hand gave him the ability to nicely bribe passersby (kids in particular) from staying out of his image -- maybe there's a lesson here about carrying pocket printers around.

But my favorite (full) quote from our interview speaks more to the haunting, timeless-feeling quality of Thomas' work, and the reason why we never want film to fully go away, even as the industry has largely replaced it by digital:

"I just love the detail of large format and the character of this particular film. With film, especially with Polaroid, you always have these not-so-perfect parts in the picture, not totally in focus everywhere – I always find mistakes coming up in the emulsion. It makes it a material process. It's existing, rather than something made up of electronic information."

Erik Johansson -- more on making the impossible real

Pop Photo
has a posting up about a talk that Erik Johansson gave at TED last year; I missed the video when it came out, but this artist completely rocks me. (See my story on him from last year.) It's the combination of insanely inventive ideas, meticulous assemblage, and the fact that they weirdly all look so real. And I am in awe of his work process -- it takes a seriously smart eye to craft photos and image-editing in the way he does, not to mention ones as complex as cars passing in two dimensions.

Check out the images on his website.

Untold Stories

Maybe it's from being raised on Raymond Chandler novels, but I am perpetually drawn to all things steeped in noir: my bedroom is wallpapered with printouts of Crewdson, Atget, and Michael Wolff's "Transparent City." And, as of this week, with photographs from Jonathan Smith's Untold Stories, which opened last Thursday at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea, and are on display through November.


I had the chance to interview Smith for the October Pop Photo last month, not for this series but for his Bridge Project. (The article's not up online yet, but the issue is on the stands.) The Bridge Project, as Smith described it, was an archival task: rather than capturing New York City Bridges themselves, he was interested in their context, from different viewpoints in more obscure locations, as an unchanging backdrop to the city constantly in flux. They're fascinating from this perspective partly because you rarely see bridges captured in this way, but more so because of their voyeuristic component. You're conscious of the photographer traveling through the city, documenting scenes as a detached witness: such as a wedding, kids playing on a sandhill, an anonymous residential garage.

Untold Stories is more suggestive, with its cinematic stills of nightlit strangers posed in uncertain settings, an underpass, through the window of a motel. But it also includes photos that are in their way archival, city-at-night, viewed from obscure vantage points; capturing a certain aspect of New York which is, always, a city of voyeurs, whether by choice or accident.

I'm posting a few of my favorites below, but if in the city, it's far better to stop by the gallery and wander around, paint in the narrative, and fill in cracks. The gallery is located at 511 West 25th Street.