A View of Manhattan

Some days a slash of hot pink light on the wall was my cue to grab the camera. Other days it was an oppressive storm cloud that started me shooting. No matter the reason, I’ve spent the last five years convinced that the best shows in New York City aren’t on Broadway. The best shows are free–and they’re through my kitchen window in Queens. The sunsets, the morning light, the pigeons swirling in formation, that famous skyline. They held me.

Though I couldn’t see the half-drawn window shades on the buildings way across the way, I liked to dream up the lives of the people working in those offices or cooking (ok, choosing the evening’s delivery menu) in those apartments. While some people think NYC gets too much attention, that it’s not really part of America, my daily watch over it always reminded me how many stories go untold. There’s a lot of Flyover America in the midst of NYC. It’s a living Edward Hopper painting.

But, just as I’ve had to pull myself away from Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning when the Whitney was closing for the evening, it’s time for me to leave my window project behind. After 17 years living in NYC, I’m heading out. It’s time for a new view.

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Focus on America’s National Parks: Images of Yellowstone

It has finally arrived. Yesterday, the first episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea provided the best excuse in recent memory to avoid all to-dos, to step away from the musts, to ignore text messages and e-mails.

The show began with a quote from John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”

I thought back on some of the beauty I’ve experienced in the National Parks. The day at Denali when, with just a few other people around, I watched a moose taking a midday bath with her newborns. The afternoon a foghorn broke through the quiet of a hike in Acadia National Park. And the hundreds of images I focused on during a three-day photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park. Here, some of the photos I settle into when I need to pull back from daily life. I hope you enjoy them.

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Essential Travel Photos: Chicago Edition

Is the 2.5-hour wait to get up to the Skydeck of Chicago’s Sears, er, Willis Tower worth it? (Oh, that name change!) Without hesitation, I say yes yes yes. Stepping out onto one of the new glass box observation decks with my sister-in-law and nieces is my favorite travel memory of the summer.

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Can Tourism Save Detroit?

Photo by mandj98 via Flickr.

Time magazine’s slideshow capturing Detroit’s decay in photos by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre is stunning and utterly heartbreaking.

My thought as I watched: As travelers/tourists we’re a powerful economic force. Can we help save Detroit?

A number of years ago, I worked with a woman who was originally from Detroit. She loved her hometown and missed it terribly. I can’t remember her name, but I vividly remember the glow on her face when she talked about the city she’d left behind and to which she vowed to return someday.

What is it about Detroit? Friend and fellow writer Margaret Littman, another fan of the city says, “I love Detroit’s architecture and public art and wide boulevards. But more so, I love that Detroit is such a microcosm of American: boomed thanks to ingenuity and innovative and now struggling with what to do next. It is a melting pot for better (lots of ethnic restaurants) and worse (racism). Plus, I’m a sucker for an underdog.”

Now, Detroit sounds pretty bleak and hopeless in Motor City Breakdown an article in the most recent Rolling Stone. Here Mark Binelli, another Detroit expat, takes an evocative look at the decaying city through the lens of the decaying Big Three automakers.

For example: “To get to the conference, I ride the People Mover, an elevated tram that runs through downtown Detroit in a three-mile one-way loop. The city used to have an extensive trolley system, but it was purchased by National City Lines, a front company formed by GM, Firestone, Standard Oil and other corporations with automobile interests, after which the trolley tracks were ripped up and replaced with buses. The People Mover began running in 1987 and seems, in its utter uselessness, as if it might have been built by another secret auto-industry cabal as a way of mocking the very idea of public transportation. The monorail cars are automated and driverless, like trams at the airport or an amusement park; occasionally, walking along a barren downtown block, you glance up and notice a pair of empty cars passing above your head at a haunted crawl.”

Also worth a click is Detroitblog, mentioned in Binelli’s article, where you’ll find find tender-sad stories unfolding in the shadows of the large-scale decay.

Poor Detroit. The C&VB Web site, where I went to find photos to use for this post, includes this message about its image library: “All photographs are available free of charge for editorial usage and the positive promotion of metro Detroit as a travel and tourism destination.”

I don’t imagine a lot of places have to specify “positive.”

Like Margaret, underdog cities hold a huge appeal for me, and the decline of Detroit adds an irresistible mystique. It’s in on my list…

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Photographers Focus on the 50 States

Photo by Shawn Gust. Courtesy of the 50 States Project.

The Works Progress Administration did it. Musician Sufjan Stevens has done a bit of it. Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey got a whole bunch of people to do it. And, of course, Sophia, Matt, and I are deep into our own version of it.

The it in question? Exploring, one by one, what makes each of the 50 states unique—and looking for the threads that tie them together. Now it’s time to add another to the list: The 50 States Project. Every other month, 50 photos—one from each state—will be posted on the site. Flyover America checked in with Stuart Pilkington, the U.K.-based (we’ll get to that) creator and curator of the project to find out what it’s all about.

Why did you launch The 50 States Project? You’re UK-based, right? Why did you want to focus on the U.S. in this way? Why now?

Pilkington: Okay, well I have a Moleskine book—I always wanted to be Ernest Hemingway—where I jot down my ideas for future projects or just ideas in general. I knew for 2009 I wanted to create a project that meant I wasn’t involved as a photographer, just purely the curator.

So it was the last few months of 2008 and a few things happened which finally gave birth to the 50 States Project. I knew already that I wanted to involve the great and burgeoning talent that is based in the U.S. I’m based in the UK but my focus has always been on the branch of art photography that I would suggest started in the U.S. with the likes of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld.

At the same time the U.S. election started to grip our attention in the UK. Television and print also began to focus their attention on the election and the country as a whole. It seemed everyone was finally allowed to fall in love with the U.S. all over again after a rather troubled and confusing eight years. One of the programs on TV was called Stephen Fry in America and over six episodes the actor and comedian visited every state in a London taxi. This program and a visit from my father who as a memory exercise was learning all the capitals of the 50 States suddenly gave me the eureka moment. I could kill two birds with one stone a) by learning about this country that I thought I knew a lot about but in reality didn’t and b) involve the next generation of art and documentary photographers whose work I love so much.

How did you find the photographers for it?

Pilkington: Well, this was the unknown quantity for me at the beginning. I knew from inviting photographers for my previous projects that there was a huge wealth of artists based in New York and California but I really wasn’t sure if there was a wealth of talent based in the other states. So to begin with I sent invites to five photographers to see whether my idea connected with anybody.

To my delight Brian Ulrich, who is currently located in Illinois, came back and gave it the thumbs up. I was very heartened by this and he was a great catalyst for the project. He provided a long list of individuals many of whom you see taking part in the project now. It was then a domino effect as photographers came on board they suggested other names in other states. I also gained a lot of help from people like Liz Kuball, Casey Kelbaugh and Michael David Murphy who generously pitched in with names.

And for finding individuals in the remaining few states it was just a case of wading through trusty old Google to find what treasures lay beneath.

In the first round of photos, what surprised you the most? Were there any themes that repeated through several states?

Pilkington: The quality of the images has pleased me immensely. I think everyone has stepped up to the plate and responded to the brief with flying colors. It’s a joy working your way through the images.

I think what has surprised me the most are the similarities and the contradictions. It is indeed a vast land and in some ways it would be better to link the states geographically maybe going from north to south or east to west.

At this time of year there is the most obvious distinction of the weather—the northern states are riddled with snow and yet as you move south the subjects in the images are bathed in sunlight.
The photographers have also highlighted some of the immediate concerns for the U.S. in 2009 as well as the hope. There is the underlying theme of the biting recession in the property market and the car industry. The environment is touched upon and the legacy of the previous administration. In some states celebrity is looked at and in others religion and race. You can see a progressive attitude in some areas and more conservative feel in others.

Indeed I think you can even detect a certain shift in expression and style as you move from one end to the other. I think there is definitely a west coast and an east coast sensibility in the work produced.

In summary, it’s a very hard task of the photographers to represent a whole state with one image but I’m very hopeful after such as strong start that by the end of the project the 300 images that will have been produced will be a) something rewarding to look at and b) help document something of the nature of the country as it heads into pastures new.

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