Chris Bickford

“The city after a busy day. The city on rainy afternoons. The city when you take a day off, or get up at the wrong hour, or get off at the wrong stop and let yourself wander down unfamiliar streets…

“The wilting city at noon. The city of buses that become beaming vaporetti on foggy mornings. The after-hours city at 2 a.m. when a cabbie stops, and a hasty jitter of underdressed girls tap the cobbled street with oversize heels and are instantly rushed into a club…The city on crisp, winter-clear mornings. The old city of splashing fire-hydrants–do children still play in the water when time stops and the heat rises and all you long for is a brief rain shower to break the spell? The city holding its breath, gauging the clouds. The city when it finally does rain. The city of long shadows. The city of bridges speckling the night.”

–Andre Aciman, from the introductory text of Jean-Michel Berts’ “The Light of New York”

I hated New York for a long time. “Hate” is probably too strong a word; I was over it; I wasn’t interested; I was turned off by the commerce, the narcissism, the stress, the slavery to fashion and “success”, the egotism, the lack of peace, the absence of living things (aside from people, pets, and rats), the overwhelming preponderance of advertising and media, media, media…

But lately I’ve begun to see the city in a different way. I’ve learned to fantasize about the city, to dream the city. I’ve learned to look at the city in little pieces…a red brick building against a blue sky; a blue-painted facade fringed with autumn leaves…figures hurrying through subway steam; a pigeon resting on a wrought-iron fence, waiting for fresh discarded pizza crusts…a couple kissing under an umbrella in the snow…tattooed hipsters hanging out on the front stoop of their building like Mick and Keith in “Waiting on a Friend”…

I’ve been talking about moving to the city–at least part-time–to “further my career”, but not until my last visit did this go from being something I felt I ought to do to something I want to do. Part of it had to do with reconnecting with some old friends, part of it had to do with spending a lot of time in the East Village. A lot of it had to do with taking the subway as little as possible. And then of course, mostly it had to do with wandering aimlessly, with a camera, not necessarily even looking for photos, or caring if I got any good ones. The magic of a great city is that if you let yourself go, you will stumble upon things you would never have otherwise seen. Or, as Doisneau writes, about another city, “No matter where you look, there’s always something brewing. You only have to wait, you have to watch for a long time before the curtain deigns to rise. So I wait, and every time the same high-flown formula trots into my mind: Paris is a theatre in which you pay for your seat with wasted time. And I’m still waiting.”

In New York, wasted time is harder to come by (and thus a much more valuable luxury), the seats are less comfortable and more expensive…but the show is always on, 24 hours a day.   In all kinds of weather.   It’s on.  No need to wait.

SantaCon can be a bizarre experience for the uninitiated.  My friend Wick thinks it’s a strange cult, and won’t go near all those boozing, toking Santas.    I stumbled upon the annual event by accident, walking up Avenue A after an aimless stroll through Chinatown; first I saw two guys dressed up as Santa Claus walking in the direction of Tompkins Square Park…then I saw three other Santas round the corner headed towards the park. And then five more. As I neared the park, I saw a sea of red velvet bubbling around the Avenue A entrance…with smatterings of green and white from girls dressed as sexy elves. Literally hundreds of partying Santas, brown-bagging liquor and toking on doobies–ah, the sacrelige!

I was transfixed, and spent an hour or so milling amongst them taking photos.  Had I known about the event, I would have dressed for the occasion, I swear!   The revelers were nice enough to me, but without Santa gear I was basically a voyeur, a tourist, or worse, someone from the press…

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what it was all about.  Googling random phrases on Santa Claus brought up nothing.  Eventually my friend Cary Conover (his blog here) informed me about SantaCon, and sent me some pix of himself covering the event for the NY Times a few years back.   These folks apparently had been partying since 10 AM in their Christmas duds, and were joined by an international cast of revelers in cities around the world.   Crazy kids.  I wonder what the REAL Santa thinks of all these shenanigans…

Last week I was in New York for a photography conference, and had the opportunity to shoot a little bit more for my “In the Night” series. Fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of hanging out with some old friends kept me from being very single-minded about it, but I did spend one fruitful night in various dance clubs, particularly Element and the Annex. I wanted some energetic photos to contrast with the still, lonely vibe of most of the stuff I’ve done up to now on the subject. I think the next step may be to figure out a way to capture the “landscape” of the night on the LES…maybe I’ll spend a few nights out in the rain with a tripod trying to channel Alfred Stieglitz…I’m thinking of going up again around New Year’s, which should be interesting.

Anyway, some photos…

Pictorialism is a style of photography that flourished around the turn of the 20th century which attempted to place photography within the context of the great artistic movements of the time–symbolism, impressionism, etc. It focused mainly on alternative processes and “painterly” themes, and indeed much of the work looked very much like the impressionist painting of the time. The movement was short-lived, as the Modernists took over and the next great wave of photographers embraced a more realistic and journalistic use of the camera, but even so, the Pictorialists, in their time, with their classical aesthetic and anti-modern sentimentality, produced some truly beautiful work.

I’ve lately been enjoying several books on Pictorialism, and looking at some of the interesting techniques the photographers used to achieve their effects: gum bichromate printing, photogravure, oil prints, etc. Not being a darkroom photographer myself, I have mainly been interested in the “look” they achieved and thinking about how to create similar looks in the digital darkroom. Rather than trying to recreate any literal approximation of the processes, I’ve just been thinking about the aesthetic itself, and playing around in Photoshop to create a similar feel.

Anyway, this little house in Currituck, which is one of my favorite houses in the area, has been the subject of my first experiment. I think I like the look, and hopefully will develop a little project around it. Kind of a nostalgic, Old South, Old Outer Banks, kind of thing. More to come later.

Here on the Outer Banks, we really don’t have much deciduous foliage to speak of. Matter of fact, I have yet to see a red or brown leaf anywhere except for the plastic ones people decorate with for Halloween…No, here the “fall color” we get is all in the water and sky, and it comes with the changing atmosphere; crisper air, big thunderhead clouds…Big rich reds, deep blues, blazing oranges, and lots of steel-cold grey…

This fall has been a little different however, as summer has refused to leave our little patch of sand. Aside from a couple of brief storms and a fast-moving offshore hurricane, we’ve enjoyed day after day of cloudless, warm, beautiful weather. Which irritates me to no end. Aside from the fact that the American Southeast is is suffering from one of the worst droughts of the century, day after day of pure blue sky makes for very uninteresting photography…

Still, every now and then a little patch of weather comes through, and brings with it the wind and clouds, a different mood for each direction: balmy, humid southeasters with a taste of the tropics in the air; dry southwesters with their biting black flies and the smell of earth from East Carolina farm country; and the big burly nor’easters full of rage and drama and salty, biting wet winds that chill you to the bone…

I’m hoping the weather gets worse soon…