Brooklyn Bound

So I'm moving to Brooklyn.
Surprise twist? Time to begin a whole new project... 

There is LIFE!

My first plants in New York. A very special addition to my life. 

i don't even miss my jetta

yeah right. 

the hallway

 

lafayette conquitas

 

someone's eager

 

yes i am still alone

 

when walking home from school didn't mean 10 layers

now i take the subway :) 

a couch!!!!

 

settling in is a process

 

to each their own

 

not all new yorkers are nasty

 

yes it's halloween

 

the phatom

 

i'm comment-less

 

touch your toes

 

our proud play station

 

misery takes a shower

 

how art is made

 

why i fell in love

 

j train

 

sunniest spot in the apartment

 

the corner

 

nothing strange going on here

 

the front step

 

A Sunny Day

 

Mott St.

 

mulberry cemetery

 

 

the nomad grows roots

I had been in New York for six weeks before I began photographing. There was something terribly uncomfortable to me about taking my camera out when I first arrived. I had only a cot in a sterile campus dorm room to call home. Finding my housing too depressing to return to everyday, I spent a lot of my time walking around the city at night alone. I would sit in the park until all hours of the night, watching the other night owls wander through while rats rummaged for the day's leftovers. One such night a stranger sang to me; "Hey there lonely girl..." as he passed by. I was alone, and I was lonely, but slowly the cozy diners and subways I traveled between were creating my little world. It wasn't long before I stopped jumping when the rats scurried by. I was so grateful to leave my grad student prison and move up to my friend Cate's apartment in Harlem where a futon on her living room floor awaited me. During my stay in Harlem I sat out on the fire escape over Broadway late at night, writing and observing the street below. It was from my perch late one saturday night that I saw a young man bleed from his sliced abdomen following a stabbing. Minutes later I watched as another man open fired on the street corner shooting one man through the chest, leaving him dead in an instant. The next day I flew home to Canada and called one of my professors to tell him I wouldn't be at school. For some reason I felt the need to tell him what I had witnessed the night before. "Gary," I said," I watched someone get murdered last night." without pausing he replied; "Welcome to New York."
I returned to the city after a much needed repose back in the open space at home. It was early october when I first opened the door to my own place on mlberry st. It was then that I took my camera out and decided it was time to start shooting for the first time since I had arrived in manhattan. The images that I want to share will hopefully tell something of the time I've spent here since then - making a home for myself in a tiny pocket of this crazy island. 

Charlemagne's Barber Shop

 

stillness

I was really upset when I returned from my trip to Florida to discover that somewhere along the way I had lost a roll of photographs. On the lost roll were images I shot of a Haitian Barbershop that had been devastated by the storm. At Thanksgiving I returned down south to find that it had been left untouched. What remained were the scatterings of a day in time, left still beneath pockets of ceiling and other wreckage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disaster in South Florida

I would like to share the images from my trip to Florida following hurricane Wilma. I have also attached a blurg providing insight into what the photographic project meant to me.
Hope you enjoy.
-Lindsay






Photographic Assignment: Extended Documentary
THE PROMPT WAS DISASTER.
I flew to Florida on November 3rd to photograph the wreckage left in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. I left New York not knowing how those who had been without power or resources would be coping in the beaten, inhospitable landscape. When I arrived much of the power had been restored and it seemed as if nothing of great significance was damaged besides roofs and street signs. I did find it terribly sad to see what had become of the beautiful ficus trees that now lay on their sides, their shallow root systems unable to anchor them against the storm.

Even more striking than the uprooted trees, were the destroyed homes that I witnessed while exploring the poorer Haitian neighborhoods. It was there that I began to uncover some of the social problems we face when the forces of nature descend upon us. The local Haitians, like many ethnic communities, are a vibrant source of culture among the ever-expanding strips of generic retail stores and national food chains that comprise the Floridian landscape. Their culture is worthy of the soil they live on and their community provides a very colorful contrast to the white neighborhoods they border. It was within those neighborhoods that I photographed the wreckage that lay behind broken down fences or collected at the ends of driveways, overflowing onto the streets; that which exposed the true vulnerability of their craftily constructed structures.

The richness of this photographic journey led me to inquire into the nature of our fears concerning global warming, and the reality of what is left in the wake of devastating hurricanes. Each and every one of us needs to wake up in the morning with our world still existing around us. This is the only planet we have to live on, though its probable destruction is beginning to feel like a ticking time bomb. We all share an unavoidable vulnerability each day that we ride a subway, that we cross a street, that we take a breath. It is the world’s chaotic order that provides us with our fears and anxieties, but we must continue living. Nature is a force far beyond our control, so we build our homes and embrace our communities and live in synch with the rhythm of life. The possibility of impending disaster is unavoidable. In times of natural disaster, every man in the path of destruction is made equal. Destruction and loss are sad and inevitable, but when warned, the rich can save themselves and get out. What adds to the tragedy of such events is the reality that those who do not have the means to escape cannot.

Though all those who survive a natural disaster share in their experience, many lose more than they can afford to replace. I don’t propose that I have a solution to offer which would condition our empathetic onlookers to take action for those who are without. I don’t even know that it is our individual responsibility to rescue them or fund their repairs. What I do know is that photographing such events is an important means of communicating to the others whose lives are untouched what is happening. The global warming that we’re being threatened by will render humanity extinct without appropriate action. Our desire to consume drives us. Our concern for the planet does not.
Individuals must begin to see their responsibility to have a global concern for this planet we think of as our own. I should hope that the images I have returned to New York with will provide viewers with an alternative way of seeing these events than typically portrayed in the media. We have been overwhelmed by images of the confused state left by Katrina, leaving us with a sense of a problem too enormous to generate a specific plan. The sensationalism of the media serves as a form of entertainment to those of us who are removed from the tragedy itself. When we no longer think of each individual's suffering, we tend to lose sight of the real meaning such reportage should bring us. By stirring away from the enormity of the media's approach, I hope to convey my own sensitivity to those who have been affected. It is only when we think of them as people like our selves that we can have a sense of what they have lost. Perhaps these images can even bring some to be alarmed by the reality that our neglect for the planet is catching up with us. After all, a storm of greater magnitude could mean that no one is safe. If this planet needs to, it will shake us off, and it will surely be spinning long after we’re gone. 

 

 

 

the december show