Harlem Stories

Wednesday July 27th, 2011

Sean Gilligan lives in Harlem. One day, while walking along his street, he met an old neighbor named Peanut. Peanut began telling Sean about their block and the history held within. Sean learned how Peanut had once been a great dancer and about their neighbor Poncho, a legendary conga player who’d once played for Fidel Castro during his historic visit with Malcolm X. Enthralled by these stories, Sean soaked in as much in as he could. Then, last winter Peanut passed away, and Sean realized how many stories he’d taken with him. At that moment, Sean became committed to gathering and sharing the stories of his fellow Harlem residents.

Sean’s new found passion for Harlem’s stories progressed from there and morphed into a personal project of sorts. As he dug deeper, Sean found himself drawn to the music that filled his neighborhood streets. Sean explained, “In summer, in the evenings, our neighbor plays his trumpet out of his third floor window and it’s often stopped me dead in my tracks. I just have to stop to listen.” Sean decided he wanted to share his tight-knit community of hardworking entrepreneurs, artists and local business owners with the rest of the world. He believes Harlem was in the midst of a modern day Renaissance and felt the need to document this. So with this in mind, Sean began work on a book that would, “highlight the creativity and determination of the people of Harlem, and how great that creative force is that sustains them and nurtures their community.”

Sean began his process with photographing neighborhood artists and musicians, all of which have been incredibly interesting and unique. When asked who’s been his most intriguing subject to date, Sean replies, “That’s difficult to answer because everyone I have photographed so far has me furiously jotting down quotes from them during our shoot.”

I asked Sean what was his biggest challenge in getting this project off the ground,

Like any photographer knows, access is always the key ingredient and the first step. The best advice I have ever received about gaining access and developing trust with people I wanted to photograph was “Get There, Be There, Stay There” and the rest just works itself out. My biggest challenge is always how to break the ice with a new person who I see who I haven’t met yet, I question if its appropriate for me to just walk right in and introduce myself? And I worry about, what if I’m not welcome? But, experience has shown me that once someone senses my genuine interest in them, I’m usually pleasantly surprised at how fast people open up, when the opportunity is there for them to do so.

Through this project Sean says he’s, “learned more about human nature, others and myself.” When picking subjects for this piece Sean would ask himself a simple question, “What do I have to learn from this person?” Throughout the process, he’s found some very compelling answers to that question.

I ended our conversation by asking Sean what he loved most about Harlem. He replied,

How caring and interesting its residents are. Everyone has a story. It’s one of the last true New York neighborhoods where history and tradition remains. Harlem is part of New York but it’s it’s own thing entirely.  Its quiet up here when the rest of the city is reeling, yet, if you listen closely, you can hear people talking, laughing and truly enjoying life, in a very relaxed, non-Manhattan way.  There’s something old about Harlem, something different that’s hard to define but easy to experience and something that is most definitely evolving into something new.

Sean won a PDN Faces award for his portrait of Harlem resident Floyd Bryan Davis. Heep an eye out for his book as it will be on shelves soon.

- Maria

A Visit with Thinkso and The New York Times Magazine

Friday May 28th, 2010

On Monday, our producers Jess and Ben dropped by the creatives at Thinkso and The New York Times Magazine. They gave me the skinny on their West-side visits:

Jess (left) discusses our photographer's work with Thinkso staff. All photos by Ben Weldon.

Thinkso is a boutique  graphic design firm with a deep toolbox of styles, and a client list to match (a few fun examples here, here, and here). They were particularly interested in seeing portfolios for annual reports and an international investment firm client of theirs, so we focused more on the institutional lifestyle and portrait work of our photographers.

Unlike most portfolio reviews where the creatives stream through over the course of several hours, at Thinkso the entire design team and one of the partners arrived all at once and stayed for nearly an hour, carefully examining each portfolio on display.

Like many graphic design firms these days (and clients, generally), they were more apt to hire photographers who were local to a shoot’s location to keep travel expenses to a minimum. Speaking of locations, we here happy to share Raleigh photographer Bruce DeBoer‘s portfolio:

And, Michael Winokur‘s (from San Francisco) book:

Also of note: most of them being designers, they were very aware of the designs of our photographers’ leave-behinds. They gave nice feedback in instances where they thought the photographs were better than the design. Which is a warning to photographers: bad or dated presentations (books, prints, leave behinds) reflects poorly on the images. So if you don’t fancy yourself a designer, seek professional design help on your next rebrand!

For lunch, we met up with Andy Delisle, one of our Phoenix photographers who happened to be in town on business. Andy’s often traveling for work, and recently produced a nice series of images from his visits to the Vancouver Olympics.

Andy DeLisle (L) and Jess Dudley (R) noshing at Stout's in Times Square

Next stop was The New York Times Magazine, relatively easy to find because their name’s on the building!

Jess checking out an art installation which randomly pulls from The New York Times archive

It was nice to finally meet Clinton Cargill and the others from the photo department in-person, because we’ve talked with them by phone and email on so many previous occasions, and the magazine’s staff have become frequent users of our site.

Clinton was surprised that more photographers (not referring to ours, in particular) don’t indicate their city on their websites and portfolios. From the start, he would like to know where a photographer lives, because it will often determine whether or not they get the job.

Fortunately, Richard Morgenstein‘s portfolio case clearly indicates that he’s from San Francisco:

The photo editors were all very interested in the books, and took leave-behinds for every photographer that we showed. FYI: if you haven’t heard, The New York Times Magazine just won “Design Team of the Year” at the ADC (Art Director’s Club) Awards, plus a Gold Cube in the Photography category.

- Neil Binkley

iPhone as Inspiration

Wednesday May 26th, 2010

Each creative person goes to different places for inspiration, and I was impressed with Evan Sklar’s “source” for keeping things fresh: his iPhone. It’s interesting to see what this New York photographer, who’s shot for GQ, Martha Stewart Living, Target, Macy’s, etc., comes up with on his cell phone:

"Lamb"

Evan took these first three images with nothing but his iPhone and a tape measure. I asked him to tell me how/why he uses his phone to take pictures:

Iphone = iFun. It’s a tiny portable camera and lab in one. I make way too many pictures with my phone. I make pictures with it every day. Videos also. I have 1,739 pictures on it. I’ve had it for a year. There’s a kind of nice thing about using it which says that I know that this is just a kind of fun and silly one-off picture, not “serious” or “significant” enough to break out the “real” camera so using the phone is a way of having your cake and eating it too.

"Pigeon"

"Gull"

I certainly understand the “guilt” (obsession?) of not having a camera when you’re out doing groceries and see some unusual person/color scheme/quality of light that probably should be photographed. In essence, a camera phone can be almost be a therapeutic alternative to beating yourself up for not having brought your real camera.

"Mr. Sushi"

Sklar says that he’s also used his iPhone as a “sketch pad” for an idea, and has even returned to shoot something again with his “real” camera. The examples below are the original iPhone shot at left, then the professional version at right. Ironically, especially with the ice cream trucks, both takes look pretty good to me! Evan even uses the Photoshop app (I had no idea that existed) on his iPhone to make the occasional tweak.

And just to give you an idea of his commissioned work (not shot with his iPhone):

I guess this gives new meaning to the term, “phoning it in.”

- Neil Binkley