By 2003 the neighborhoods of North Brooklyn, Greenpoint and Williamsburg had been in gentrification mode for years, and by this time the level of gentrification was hyper, and North Brooklyn was its epicenter.
Of course, as a neighborhood person, in the truest sense, like everybody else in my neighborhood that was, in 1999, basically the entire population, with the exception of the artist/college class, that had always taken advantage of the cheap rents, and, if they weren’t so ambitious and self-involved, might have understood that it is a magical, endemic place. Of course we stood our ground and we fought for our homes, because it was legal, ethical and the right thing to do and, being not exactly wealthy, it was absolutely necessary for our survival, in a city that forgot about the folks that built it. I’ve covered this quite well, too well, in the book, Art and Gentrification, and if you would read it, you would understand that the loss of home, during the time one loses his family in old age, and passing itself, and then the loss of my job, my neighborhood and all that I have worked for my entire life, marks you for life, in unwanted ways, with serious consequences. By 2013 I was, in fact, displaced. We naively held our legal and ethical ground, because we wanted to live in our homes where most of us lived most of our lives, which is pretty simple to understand.
Perhaps, while viewing these last shots of what’s become, the “old” Greenpoint, in a matter of a few hyper-gentrified years, you might see or feel, the tragedy of the fairy tale, “We made your neighborhood a better place to live.” In orddr to hide the cold facts of being illegally pushed out against our wills, so that others, from around the world could come to North Brooklyn and plant their flag to the self.
During my years at home here, the waterfront didn’t change. In places organic descent was the plan, but, the 2006 fire in Greenpoint at American Rope & Wire symbolized what it help set in motion even further, the redevelopment of this section of the North Brooklyn waterfront, that was depicted in these pictures. Every thing south, in Willimasburg, in 2006, having been or on the verge of massive development, in new zoning that decided that towers could be built and people could live and have homes in them where there was once only industry, remembering, that’s exactly how the Williamsburg, but not the Greenpoint, waterfront began. as a resort and then a suburb of Manhattan. But this ended in the financial panic of 1853 and then it became what it was until the Greenpoint Williamsburg contextual rezoning act of 2005. Whatever that means.
In 2006 American Rope Company and other industrial structures were burned in a giant fire that lasted for days on the Greenpoint waterfront. There after the section was fair game for development and is entirely gentrified.
There was a history where the plains Indians in a battle, if their backs were against the wall, they had a sacred arrow that they would impale the ground with, and they would stand their ground, singing their death song, to their end, or survival.
Now, after laying all that bullshit on you, and if all that bullshit didn’t happen, this would’ve been my only introduction – It’s a photo essay about, if I had my way, the manner in which i try to catch or capture a moment in a landscape in order for it to embed in a viewer, knowing if the framing and subject is interesting enough, no jazzing is required.
So i would have produced with or without the tragedy, depending on your bank account and pedigree, of hyper-gentrification, in other words, forced displacement.
I always paid close attention, constantly to this location between the FDR and the East River. I was always going to shoot it to the best of my abilities since it achieved star status on my list of hits. In fact, I didn’t shoot it until 2004, having planned, since 1986, to do it. In fact, i did hit it hard in 2004 and got some good shots, and, ironically, could have walked away, but tought i could do better, which i didn’t. Such is the life of someone documenting last things in one of the great eras of last things, with something itself that is a last thing – camera and film, and, most importantly, the shooter has something at stake.
That would be my home.
2004
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2012
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I stated earlier that i was gonna shoot this location to the best of my ability. That usually means that, no matter what, I will return until I get a shot that, i think, defines best, what it is on my mind. They’re called things, and some say there aren’t any ideas but in things.
In 2004, i poured it on, doing enough good work, that i could walk away.
But, by looking at the picks from the struggle to capture between 2004 and 2012, you might see the desperation, and final defeat of the whole process of having no choice in the loss of your home that coincided with these years. Missing this ritual in 2010 and 2011, when my family was in the final phase of their lives, and there wasn’t a minute to duck out and shoot.
Returning in 2012 with the moonrise shots, by this time, for the first time, i was losing my home, had no family and using a digital camera for the first time.
Ironically, the first shot i did in 2004 was the “The” shot, of this thing – my home. I could have quit the site and location, then in 2004, which is normally what i do when my picture criteria are met. Instead i kept shooting.