The Long Island Railroad Float Bridges were built in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of Queens, which, like my old neighborhood just south in Brooklyn, often had small residential sections dwarfed by the industry surrounding them.
There’s plenty of content on the net about this site, much of it is really worthwhile, and will spare me the regurgitation. I’ll speak about the experience of capturing the Floats over time and, how, through the Predictive Moment – the intuitive knowledge that some thing will cease to exist – one can capture, and do so, decisively, the about-to-be-gone. A method of capture that begin with what’s outside, in time and place, and, ends there. Being there at the right time that only, at that time, intuition would permit and being there over time in all conditions and experiencing the thing itself in its environment and atmosphere.
You go to the site on a good day, twilight or night, and it begins. Most will end up acting as “safeties” in the event your intuition is illusion. But from here on in, the layout known, you can hit the site when the conditions seem right, or, simply hold off in a game of risk, until you feel, maybe there’s a year left in the site’s existence.
The LIRR Floats Bridges shoot would use the latter strategy. This move gives greater efficiency by freeing up time to capture the hundreds of other sites on the list of disappearance – many of which are not in my home city of New York. it’s risky, but much gets done if you can keep a constellation of locations, each with their own quality of light depending on the possibilities, all under the gun of continual demolition, that time, place and chance will ultimately decide the fate of, and which you seek.
All you can hope to do, when your source is also ultimately something that controls you and your aim, in this situation of randomness, heed, understand and be alert.
I rarely use the word, “story”, and also equate the overuse of the word, “narrative” with the rise of so much bull shit. When someone talks “narrative” i run for the Floats, or places like them.
Experiencing seems episodic, connected and not. It’s exhausting, often stunning and certainly a bit transformative, but it never feels like a story, or pretentious narrative. Here’s the log on the string of shots meant to capture these Floats in the best way i could.
The Kodachrome Years 1986-1988
I shot them first in 1986, with, then, state of the art Kodachrome 25, after always seeing them there, particularly because i worked out of Long Island City – always a good source for jobs – as truck driver, which gave me an opportunity to see a lot of the city.
I worked 2 blocks from the floats so access was easy and, in those days, no one gave a shit about trespassing, and LIC was just an extension of Williamsburg/Greenpoint scene – the relentless march of industry up the East River in a patchwork of operational and closed facilities.
There was a guy living in the operator’s cab in the middle of the structures. At one time, there were no plywood on the windows but “curtains” he had hung. I always pondered his industrial penthouse life with his glorious view of Manhattan that no one seemed to care about until the early nineties.
The next time i shot the floats was in 1988. The Citi Bank tower has risen in the background, and, in 6 years there would be the first LIC condo towers on the waterfront – the City View.
I quit my seltzer delivery job in June, 1989 due to an injury in Lower Manhattan, i had to recover and sell my car, etc. The LIC Floats would have to wait until its final moments – there was a multitude of vanishing sites that i was constantly catching up to before they disappeared. Speaking of which, it was in 1988 that i switched from Kodachrome 25 to Ektar 25 – a negative film that, i would find out, was the best at long exposure times, unlike Kodachrome, whose color shifts and reciprocity were just too extreme to be practical, and i had struggled with since first using Kodachrome in 1977.
The operator’ cab in the center has had its plywood windows and walls ripped open, and the sole tenant of the complex has booked.
This old technology from the Industrial Revolution gave us the camera and its film. Color film was peaking in 1988, in fact it the was the beginning of the Golden Age of Color Film, that, like the manufacturing that it came out of, would be pretty much gone within 25 years.
This was the last time i would use Kodachrome on the Floats. A new era of color films had arrived.
In 1996 i returned to the site prepared for the final capture, alerted by a gut notification from my storage site, where, after 43 years of experience in the field of industrial capture at the moment of its disappearance, a vanishing is sensed by a hyper-cultivated array of neurological sensors. By this time i was no longer shooting Kodachrome 25 with a 35mm slr, but Ektar 25 negative loaded in Mamiya 7 cameras, and, as a result, got much better quality, clarity and resolution as Ektar was the highest-rez color negative made, and used with the best lenses. Done on film it meant rendering bright areas easily and is the still the benchmark for quality, although an expensive high quality scan will be required.
In eight years since 1988 nothing had changed, but the ever-present slow imperceptible organic descent of the bridges. Being in the middle of this stabilized decay and living close by is the ideal situation for a competent capture because the stress of trying to be at the right place and time before the guaranteed imminent vanishing, is really dialed back. This sort of work needs multiple photographers in multiple locations simultaneously to be successful, and not having any resources, that burden would fall on one. That’s why my last vacation was in 1984 and why i work between 90-120 hours per week.
The Golden Age of Color Film and high quality lenses – peaking for the twenty years leading up to the broad digital wipe out of film. Here i was shooting with technology that came out of the same era, and, ironically, was peaking in its quality, just as, the industrial machinery it was capturing in its final years was turning to rust and scrap.
In 1996 i thought these floats are about to go, and it’s time to get busy, and utilize the 1985 Chevy Impala i just bought form a little old lady on Long Island for 500 bucks, so i can shoot over to LIC form my home in Williamsburg, and throw the dice with the environment – the sky, water and landscape – to possibly come together in a moment of capture that will, through some skill, make an imprint in viewers’ minds. Of course, if the thing itself depicted is strong enough, like most older industry, jazzing a shot with light is unnecessary, technically speaking.
I’ve noticed that’s how a lot of people like their city shots of the dirty and lower half of things – snapshots, complete documentary straightness and without regard for atmosphere, the more “amateurish” the better, and i can’t help but notice a lot of people seeing an effort to illuminate what’s before the lens, to try to animate it or make a strike or memory implant for a viewer.
I’ve noticed that people who are from the outside of what’s being depicted enjoy the former – amateurish, “straight” shots of grain and grit, while natives and people who live, work, and, are, thus, from the environment depicted prefer the latter. Call the difference, experience, or actually living deep with the milieu depicted.
RealStill uses the atmosphere of all seasons in its capture and quest to get a memorable shot before the thing itself becomes a memory. There’s no cold like that over open water, and combined with ice and snow, it makes the trek out on the rotten piers a challenge – not to fall into the waters of the East River.
I worked two blocks from here from 1986 to 1988 at a trucking place and could walk from my home to get there, and, like most everyone else, who walks through their routines, notices the same landmarks, and clocks them.
(above) Back again in the spring of 1996.
In May of 1996 i returned to, again, outdo the last or previous shot. While on sky watch, i stupidly tried to kill some time by going to my local reduced price movie theater, the Commodore, on Broadway in Brooklyn – a waste of time, but returned to the site just in time for, what i consider, a failed attempt.
Low light breaking through a window of dry air behind me, lighting the monument and atmosphere – a mode of operation i have been hooked on from the get-go, until digital caused it to change since it likes a different light.
The light broke too early and there were no details in the atmosphere. Perhaps winter would give intent a rest.
There is now a sign hanging between the structures for the real estate developers about to transform the docks of Long Island City.
Closer to the Fall, when the skies could turn explosive with clouds, i thought this might have captured a set of structures in a way that would embed itself in the viewer’s mind and allow me to leave the site behind.
Much later in 1998 i would find that the floats of Long Island City would be restored as Gantry Park and not be demolished which is never the case. It ended ten. It wasn’t going to disappear.
As it turns out i got the probably the best shot In February, 1996 in my first attempt at capture before disappearance. It was certainly the most difficult shot to capture. But, i wouldn’t really know that had i not went through all the motions prior to disappearance and confirmed that this truly is the best i could do, relative to my resources, in practice. It certainly was, by far, the most difficult shot on the 1996 LIRR Floats shoot, and, normally it was the kind of shot that would let me walk away from the landscape, to do others in need of treatment before, they, too, disappeared. But there always were certain locations that took this treatment because it was worth it for the historic industrial importance, was so close to home and could sum up the drama of the ending of an era, during its replacement – the opposite of what it was – leisure and residential.
Very rarely has something that i have keyed in on as disappearing, in fact, gets saved, and, when it does, never in a way that would satisfy anyone who is so entrenched in the subject of disappearance, and truly experienced in its process. It’s hard to stomach the shells of the temples of industries that now can house the gentry along the waterfront, but all agree the restoration was excellent.
Will the picture of an important landscape have more value if it vanishes, or if it is restored? Will the same picture of something gone be mor memorable if charged with light and drama? In so far as theatre is history, perhaps.
If the negative film dialectic of RealStill is thwarted by the reality that ultimately dictates it – in this case a planned disappearance becomes a celebrated revival and the negative becomes a positive.
The shots in this scroll were done in order of earliest to latest, but truth be told, the above shot was the first shot of that year. I had nailed it in February, 1996, freezing and hanging on to the frozen piers, and it was worth it during a ninety minute exposure that stayed steady. The fact that i committed time through all 1996 to do even better gives an idea, in practical terms, what sort of work goes into the image. The LIC Floats were given priority status, and, although done efficiently – i’ve had to drive anywhere from 10 miles to Jersey or 2,264 miles to Butte in order to adquately do an industrial landscape justice – so shooting hyper-local is a breeze. Coincidentally this shot of the group, by far, was the most difficult and dangerous and i often, for good and obvious reason, wonder if that equation can be counted on for added value. I do have the proof, in the case of the Long Island City Railroad Float Bridges. that both document vanishing industry and the steps it takes to nail it down, one thing is certain. Getting to know your subject over time, whether shooting it or simply always seeing it, and passing it by over the years, is to experience the history of that thing as the thing itself.
Should i have quit in 1996? If i knew then that the Floats would become a park and be preserved, i would have stopped.