Travel And Tourism Trends: New York

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Philip Montgomery | The Masjid

I had planned to feature an Islamic-themed photo essay a few days ago on the occasion of Eid el-Fitr, but I was in Guatemala for the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, so couldn't find the time to do so.

The Masjid, or the mosque, is the place of worship for Muslims. These places of worship range from the simplest to the most elaborate architectural structures (the most beautiful, in my view, are those in Istanbul and were either built or influenced by the great Ottoman architect Koca Mi'mâr Sinân Âğâ, who was either an Armenian, or a Greek).

The smaller places of worship are technically not mosques, but are called 'mussaleya" or some derivative thereof.

"...a person kneeling towards Mecca is not a stranger, but a brother or sister in faith."

The Masjid is the work of Philip Montgomery, and is a photo essay on the places of worships for the
the immigrant Muslim communities within New York City. Philip writes that for these new immigrants, the Masjid acts as an incubator, a neutral space, providing refuge from the outside world.

He found an incredible diversity of cultures and practices; whether in Harlem, Jamaica, Brooklyn or Queens...practices divergent from one origin to the other, whether West African Muslims, Egyptians, Palestinians, Indonesians...all bringing their rituals and characteristics to New York City's melting pot, and keeping their individual traditions intact but united under Islam, despite the slight nuances of each.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay-Area, Philip Montgomery is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the Photojournalism and Documentary Program at the International Center of Photography and is a recipient of the 2009-2010 ICP Directors Scholarship.

Wanderings In NYC | Monochromatic Hipstamatic

I think it was photographer Chase Jarvis who said "the best camera is the one you have with you...", and he was exactly right.

I happen to love street photography and walking...and living in a city such as New York City gives me so much opportunities to indulge in these two occupations that they've become become a virtual addiction. I rarely take a cab or the subway...and provided the weather is reasonable (and sometimes, even if it's unreasonable), I prefer to walk wherever I need to be (or not to be) no matter the distance.

I'm lucky to live in a neighborhood of lower Manhattan that is still relatively multilayered, and that provides innumerable and diverse opportunities for street photography; where I can photograph moneyed tourists shopping on Bleecker Street and moments later, capturing regular New Yorkers carrying on with their daily grind near West 4th Street....or go further to Chinatown and the Bowery.

I frequently carry my Fuji X Pro-1 or Leica M9 with me...these are the days when I decide I will "do" street photography for a few hours...and that's all I do for that time. There are other days when I don't carry any cameras with me, save my iPhone...but, provided I have the time and inclination, I still hunt for street photography opportunities with the same intensity as I do when I have the "real" cameras.

It's liberating to be using an iPhone to make photographs. The simplicity, the portability and the ease of making photographs on the go with the device are just wonderfully conducive to the kind of street photography I am interested in. At this point of time, as far as the iPhone is concerned, I'm addicted to the Hipstamatic app, and use its Watts lens and the monochrome BlacKeys B+W film. I might do a tiny amount of post processing on the resultant images, but the combination is quite adequate for my taste.

Since I need a place to offload these iPhone images, I created a new blog gallery, titled Monochromatic Hipstamatic with a growing number of street photographs made during my wanderings in New York City.

I also continue to "feed" my older blog gallery The Leica File (New York City with a Leica M9, and a Fuji X Pro-1) with my ongoing street photographs of the city that never sleeps...or relaxes.

Street Photography | NYC's San Gennaro's Feast

I chanced on Little Italy's San Gennaro Feast last weekend, and despite the incredibly packed crowds, I managed to make a few photographs here and there. It was lunchtime which explained the crowds moving at a snail's pace, ogling the menus of the full to capacity Italian restaurants with tables overflowing on Mulberry Street in Little Italy/Chinatown. The whole of Little Italy was blocked to traffic, so pedestrians were packed like sardines with little room to compose interesting frames.

I felt I had been transported to a filming shoot for The Sopranos, hearing exaggerated Italian American accents all around me; some inviting tourists into restaurants and others hawking mozzarella (pronounced something like 'muzarel') and cannoli, the famous Sicilian dessert. Many of those were actually waiters and restaurant staff from Mexico who occasionally whispered in Spanish to each other.

Absolutely no one cares about these details. It's here in the heart of what is left of Little Italy that the feast of San Gennaro is held every year, and which was expected to attract more than one million people from all over the world to participate in the annual Salute to the Patron Saint of Naples. Perhaps hyperbole, perhaps an overly optimistic forecast...but who knows?

A little away from the main bustle, on Mott Street, a restaurant singer was pleasing the crowd with old favorites, ranging from Domenico Modugno's Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (aka Volare) to Dean Martin's Everybody Loves Somebody. I waited for a song by the one and only Louis Prima...Just A Gigolo would've been just perfect...but I waited in vain, and anyway a woman singing anything by Louis would sound weird.

On Hester Street, there was a crowd gathering in front of a stall, listening to the patter of a man dressed as a boxing or wrestling referee. From what I gathered, the attraction was the presence of Bruno Sammartino, who would be performing mock matches with anyone who dared. It appears that Mr Sammartino is an Italian-born American retired professional wrestler, best known for being the longest-running champion of the World Wide Wrestling Federation. I saw no one volunteering.

Unfortunately, I won't be in NYC this weekend for the grand finale of San Gennaro's Feast. It'll be packed if last week end is any guide...I'll have to wait for next year.

For more of my New York City street photography and more, drop by The Leica File.

POV: Addicted To Auto-Focus

I'm not sure how other photographers and photojournalists feel, but I've become addicted to auto-focus, and it's an addiction I find extremely difficult to shake off.

When I'm in the mood, I roam the streets of New York City and try to capture something of its essence. When I do this I generally shoot from the hip to catch the candid moment, the posture, the fleeting expression...sometimes I'm successful, and many times I'm not; but that's what candid street photography is all about. The probability of catching these candid moments is quite low.

It's for that reason that I favor the Fuji X Pro-1. There's a lot to favor in the X Pro-1, but its (relatively) good auto-focus is one of its advantages. Yes, it goes to "sleep" once in a while and makes me miss the shot...and yes, its AF is not as quick as a DSLR, but it performs as well as I expected it to.

My other street camera is the Leica M9 that has no auto focus, and I struggle to choose it over the Fuji X Pro-1 when I'm off to the streets. Don't get me wrong. Its image quality is fantastic, and although I'm not exactly a Leica fan-boy, I still think it's a phenomenal camera with phenomenal lenses...and is perfect for candid street photography (among other uses, of course).

But I hesitate when I reach for it.

Yes, I know all about zone focusing, and I practice it whenever I can. But it frequently lets me down, partly because of my addiction to auto-focus (ie using my X Pro-1) and partly because the nature of the type of shooting from the hip photography is a hit and miss process.

I've thought of an analogy to this addiction..and it's like learning to drive with a stick-shift car versus an automatic. It's been said that the former makes you a better driver, so when I reach for the Leica, I comfort myself by thinking that shooting without the auto-focus has its merits sometimes, despite rueing that decision when I see the eventual results.

Now, where's my iPhone? :)

NewYorkers | Shīfu Shi Yan Ming

Update: It appears the producers of this video belatedly decided not to allow other blogs to embed the documentary. I think it's a tad silly but it's their prerogative. As I mentioned at the bottom of this post, the video can be viewed on its Vimeo page.

It's not difficult to acknowledge that New York City is the repository of some of the most interesting and diverses characters in the world...and this proves it.

One of my very favorite multimedia projects was the well known 'One In 8 Million' series by The New York Times which was a series of personal profiles of New Yorkers presented as two-minute audio slide shows with photographs by Todd Heisler. I regretted it came to an end after only a year...but I used some of the audio slideshows in my classes at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop.

I am very glad to have found a similar and very well done effort by New Yorkers; a project conceived by the partners (all native New Yorkers themselves) of Moonshot Productions (a full service production company in NYC). They describe the intent of this effort is to "create a recurring short documentary series highlighting New Yorkers from all walks of life told through the prism of each person’s vocation."

I was interested in the story of Shīfu Shi Yan Ming, a Shaolin Warrior Monk, who defected to the United States in 1992 and established a Shaolin temple, teaching philosophy and martial arts to youngsters and celebrities. The Shaolin temple teaches Chan philosophy through the disciplines of martial arts or action meditation such as Gongfu (Kung Fu) Taiji Quan (Tai Chi) and Qigong (Chi Kung).

More details on the Shaolin Warrior Monk is on The Atlantic. You can watch the documentary on Vimeo as well.

Two footnotes: New Yorkers also features Colin Huggins, the well known Piano Man, who I see often playing his instrument in Washington Square Park, and Phil Mortillaro, the locksmith, whose tiny store is in my neighborhood.

Yes, very well done! And an inspiration for my own NYC street photography and multimedia.

MediaStorm | Luv Shtick

"I do love her...but she's annoying."
"I don't take prisoners...I'm from the Middle East.
"Start spreading the Jews...er news"

I really loved this multimedia portrait of Dani Lev (aka Dani Luv), who's a musician, singer and comedian at Sammy’s Romanian Restaurant in New York. Dani likes to sing Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong classics as well as Israeli songs, and entertains the restaurant's patrons with his in-your-face shtick.

A wonderful narrative salted with typical New York Jewish humor and occasional trite cliches, Dani is also afflicted with ADD, and has an on-off relationship with his girlfriend. So it's a funny and sad insight into the life of one in eight million NewYorkers. An authentic character...the type of person that makes New York what it is.

If this wonderful short multimedia piece doesn't make you want to drop your dinner plans and go to Sammy's, I don't know what will.

It was produced by Lukas Augustin, Jillian Kitchener, and JT Thomas who participated in a MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop.

As I said, extremely well done. I watched it a few times already. You will too. Guaranteed.

Way off geographic topic but relevant: lost synagogues in New York

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I -- and others -- have written much about and, hey, even taken part in, the process of seeking out, rediscovering and documenting former synagogues that have been transformed for other use in Europe.....Here's a fascinating story by Benjamin Kabin Weitzenkorn from the local newspaper the Queens Chronicle about a woman's search for "lost synagogues" in outer districts of New York City.

On her birthday in 1999, Ellen Levitt decided to look for her mother’s former synagogue in Flatbush. The building was still there, but the congregation was gone, replaced by a Pentecostal Christian one. The news dismayed her mother, but for Levitt, it sparked an idea: to find and document other former synagogues, and to create a record so others could find them as well.

In 2009, her project became a book called “The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn,” and this past November, Levitt released her latest installment, “The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens.”

As the project grew, Levitt discovered that synagogues that had not been burned or torn down were adapted for other uses. Some became private homes, one is a correctional facility, another is used for city maintenance and one is even a mosque — but most are now churches. Read more

In New York, these transformations usually came about because of normal demographic changes that saw Jews moving from one neighborhood to another (often from small towns to cities or from to urban centers and suburbs), while in post-World War II Europe synagogues were most often orphaned by the murder of their community in the Holocaust, suppression by post-war communist regimes, or emigration of survivors. In Bulgaria, for example, whose Jews survived the Shoah, synagogues were left abandoned when almost all Jews moved to Israel.

Levitt found that many of the former Jewish sites still -- as in Europe -- often retained evidence of their original function.

The former Corona Hebrew School on 53rd Avenue, for example, boasts large stars of David on either side of its gate. Names written in Hebrew are displayed on pillars and walls on the porch. After the Jewish congregation left, the building became a private residence and music studio, and was home to Madonna, pre-fame, in the late 1970s.

Another great example is the former Young Israel of Laurelton on 228th Street. It’s a boxy 1956 building that displays a cornerstone with the Hebrew and secular dates. But its most intriguing feature is the huge window above the main entrance in the shape of a Jewish star, an emblem that the Jamaica-Queens Wesleyan Church has kept as is.

Read full article

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