A Roll of Delta 400 and the Walk to ICP

Every other year, Jenny and I visit NYC the week of Thanksgiving.  It coincides with the week-long break that the university grants to students and faculty.  The trip reminds me of the days before my career change when I visited the city regularly, calling on clients with account staff from the agency we worked for.

At this time of year, the city is starting to put on its festive sweater of lights, evergreen trappings, ribbons and bows all in preparation for the holiday season to come.  We go to take it in.  Both our families have memories of loss associated with the winter holidays; the festivities help us forget.

Eighteen years in, we still maintain separate tastes for this or that.  Invariably a day comes, where for an afternoon, we go do separate things.  Wednesday, on the last day of our trip we each decided to do a thing we wanted to do but couldn’t quite get to together.  Jenny saw a show, I went to see an exhibition at one of the photography galleries in town.

I planned the day ahead the evening before.  I was contemplating either Fotografiska or ICP (The International Center for Photography).  I spent the evening looking at websites reviewing exhibitions on display.  Fotografiska was in between installments for the third exhibition in its space, so I decided on ICP.

Our hotel was upper midtown, a couple blocks south of Columbus Circle and a couple blocks north of the heart of the theatre district.  A block and a half east was a station for the BDFM line of the subway.  I would take a train to the Broadway – Lafayette station situated between the Bowery and SOHO.  The way from there to ICP would leave me enough of a random walk through the neighborhoods in between to fill a roll of film.

I had been making pictures the whole trip, but had run out of Neopan Acros from ventures the prior two days.  In case I had the urge to push some night shots, I had a couple rolls of Delta 400 with me.  In the end I just shot digital in the evenings and as the Delta 400 was the only option still left in my bag, it would have to do for the walk to ICP.

The stairs from the subway led to the corner of Houston and Broadway.  A commercial area of little appeal at the time, but the juxtaposition of historic facades in the glass of a modern one caught my eye.  I zig zagged a few blocks north, a few blocks south and as I did the facades aged, but remained a little more commercial than I was hoping to immerse myself in.  I cut through a back alley in NOLITA and over to Bowery and found what I was looking for, a little bit of classic New York.

Used to be there were these streets in New York where everyone who did a commercial thing, congregated in a certain area.  I had staggered into the land of meat slicer and grinder sales and repair.  Old Graffiti covered facades of other commercial kitchen supply stores lined the west side of the street as well.  Across the street, rising like an abstract ghostly white apparition, sat the New Museum.  The tension of old and new that has always been a central dynamic in the story of New York, fully on display.

Having walked 40,000 steps in the prior two days, It may have been an elevated level of exhaustion; or perhaps the lack of time with a camera in hand this fall.  But I completely whiffed on focus at times on this day.  I include the image of the slicer store to flesh out the story here.  I am not oblivious to my fail in capturing it.

When it came time to get a frame or two of the New Museum, I was able to slow down and better able to concentrate.  It helped that I was waiting on the sun to illuminate the structure.  Wafty clouds were speeding overhead and soon I would have my chance.  As I waited, a couple other photographers came and went.  They were packing digital cameras with conspicuous zoom lenses.  My OM2n with a 50 prime was tiny by comparison.  They clicked and walked by, their eyes trying to figure out why I was just camped out, waiting.

I thought I was waiting for the sun.  No, that wasn’t it.  I was waiting for two museum visitors, clad in white, to head out onto the terrace to take selfies and share some PDA with lower Manhattan as their back drop.  I realized that was the shot I was waiting on.  The shot you are meant to take isn’t always the one you expect.  Sometimes you have to wait for it to reveal itself.  Sometimes, a similar image reveals itself again…wait for it…

After developing, I realized something else.  I am not used to such a large grain structure in my film.  I am usually shooting Delta 100, Acros II or even PanF.  Since I was young, I hated grain.  It was my mortal enemy.  Tri-X was completely overrated.  To this day, I miss Plus-X.  The dislike of grainy film probably influences the way I shoot and the film images I make.  As I processed, the image of the couple at the New Museum and others that followed, I really regret not having packed a couple more rolls of something else.

I walked back up to Houston Street.  To the north, a look up a crossing avenue revealed the southern edge of Midtown, including the Empire State Building.  I probably spent 20 minutes wandering the islands (street furniture) in the middle of Houston to get this image or that one.  It is easier to reduce the challenge of passing street traffic when only one lane is involved.  From a car stopped for a light, a person thought I was a beggar and offered me part of a half-eaten sandwich.

I made it over to, and crossed Roosevelt park, heading south to ICP.  Along the way, was probably what could have been the picture of the day.  It happened in a moment and If I had been shooting with my digital PEN-F I would have nailed it.  If you ever see a street image, shot with film, with the lens open enough to diminish depth of field, caught with exact focus in the briefest of moments.  Respect the game.  Shooters back in the day had it going on.

I knew I had missed it.  There’s always hope, but a month later when I developed and scanned, the reality sunk in.  Thinking back, the blue coat, the red hat, the orange of the leaves on the ground in the saturated shade of a cloudy day was probably meant for Kodachrome.  Ten blocks to the north, is the studio apartment of the late Saul Leiter.  Did he see things like this and miss them too?  Professional sports athletes are remembered for the game winning shots they make, less so the ones they miss.

But this is New York, another opportunity is around every corner.  I would take Stanton Street east, over to Essex and down to ICP.  At Allen Street I paused for a street scape.  The mural of a lion and a green shop caught my eye.  Pot still isn’t legal in Indiana, it’s appearance in the mainstream of other places remains a curious phenomenon to me.  Fortunately, I am satisfied with my current vices.  My budget can’t afford another.  Film is expensive anyway.

I was lining up the streetscape and as I was about to shoot, a young man walked into the frame.  These days there is a healthy debate about when it is appropriate to make an identifying picture of strangers.  My threshold for clicking the shutter on these is pretty high.  Dude standing on a corner in front of a pot shop wasn’t it.  I moved the camera off my eye and to the side and did this thing with my body language “Hey I want to take a picture here, hurry on across the street when the light turns and I won’t get you by accident”.  Then he gave me a reason to take the picture.  It softened the blow of having missed the woman in the floppy red hat.

Six blocks left to arriving at ICP.  I had one frame left in the roll of 24.  I had been in the zone for an hour or two now and it was beginning to leave me.

I walked into ICP, bought a ticket.  The young man at the register admired the OM2n around my neck.  I thanked him for the compliment.  Found the restroom, hit the snack bar for a drink and a cookie.  I needed a break and some energy back in my legs so I could focus on the exhibition.

There were three exhibits on display.  The first a retrospective of the mixed media work of Muriel Hasbun.  Alternative support for photographs has interested me of late and I found interest in the crumbled sheets of cloth which had been immersed in a photosensitive silver emulsion.

There was an exhibit based around the themes of displacement featuring three different photographers.  I remembered one of the names having been featured on the Sasha Wolf podcast and wanted to connect the images to the discussion.

Finally, there was a collection of portraits and publicity shots of Marlene Dietrich.  I thought this might provide some inspiration for the next time Sabrina called, wanting to shoot.

On they way out I stopped at the bookshop and my credit card left one step closer to death.  There was a book featuring two photo essays about Dresden Germany, shot 30 years apart.  Dresden is a bit of an enigma, I have visited it four times, it calls to me.  If I had the time and resources, I would lose six months there, making photographs, trying to understand it.  That was the goal of the book I now was carrying.

I picked up a retrospective featuring the work of Masahisa Fukase.  I have spent a lifetime looking at, and thinking about the pictures I have made.  I have some catching up to do in understanding the work of others and how my work relates.

Finally, I was near his neighborhood.  I needed a little something by Saul Leiter.

It was a little after 3pm, the sky was beginning to darken.  This time I used the station across the street from ICP, I had to get back to the Hotel and hear about the show Jenny had seen.  We had plans to spend the evening at the holiday market in Union Square.  Tomorrow was Thanksgiving an we would hit the road and be heading home.

You can find me, my personal work on my Site.

I am also a contributing writer at the Live View publication on Medium.

I also am the founder of F2.8Press, Publishers of Undiscovered Photography.  We have an open call for submissions for our Zine:  “Archive”.

When I am not wandering aimlessly  with a camera, I am a Lecturer of Economics and Statistics at Butler University.

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