ANTI FUR PROTEST | Soho NYC

While walking last week through Broome Street in the heart of SoHo’s shopping district, I came across a small spirited but vociferous anti-fur protest, which aimed at drawing attention to animal cruelty in the fashion industry.

To me, documenting civil disobedience is like catnip to a cat, so I snapped a handful of frames of the raucous event.

I haven't seen nor heard of anti-fur protests for quite some time, and read in the New York Times that the anti-fur movement has been largely successful in its efforts to force fashion houses to stop using skins, with almost every runway brand adopting fake fur as a fabric and eschewing the use of former luxury staples such as mink and sable.

CROSBY STREET | 65:24 Aspect Ratio

One of my favorite streets in Soho, NYC, is Crosby Street. Some of its buildings have walls always covered in “illegal” posters and ads, which I think make perfect backdrops—not just for my street fashion shoots, but also for everyday street photography with the Fujifilm GFX50R, using the super wide 65:24 X-Pan aspect ratio everyone raves about.

More of the Crosby Street in 65:24 photographs will be uploaded soon.

Call Me KIJU

Here are impromptu street portraits of Kiju on Crosby Street in Soho, NYC. Kiju is an alternative rock performer.

SoHo's Fashion Billboards

Some of my street fashion shoots begin at the corner of Houston and Crosby Streets, and on several occasions, I attempted to position the models so the massive Calvin Klein billboard would feature in the background. However, it always ended up overexposed.

Still, this sparked the idea for a mini-project showcasing Soho's iconic billboards, especially with the buzz of New York Fashion Week in town. This is an ongoing project, and this post updated whenever I have new billboards to show.

A few interesting details about these 75-foot billboards: they are typically contracted for 28-day periods and can range in price from $5,000 to an astonishing $50,000 per day, depending on the location. For instance, if the Calvin Klein billboard is in a prime spot, it would cost approximately $1.4 million every 28 days, with its image updated every two weeks.

Orchard Street | NYC

 

Scouting for new locations for upcoming urban fashion shoots on the Lower East Side, I walked on Orchard Street and discovered new spots, including murals and old style adverts painted on building facades.

Wikipedia tells us that "Orchard Street is often considered the center of the Lower East Side and is lined end to end almost entirely with low-rise tenement buildings with the iconic brick face and fire escapes. First part of Little Germany and later a Jewish enclave, the neighborhood has been home to immigrants from the mid-19th century to the present day. The street's past as the heart of the immigrant experience is captured at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's centerpiece, the restored 97 Orchard Street tenement."

The photographs above are of the facade of 130 Orchard Street which is home to Perrotin Gallery and Beckenstein Fabrics. 

Perrotin is a famous international art gallery which opened in April of 2017 in that location with 25,000 sq. ft. space, and includes a bookshop featuring unique editions and books published by the gallery.

Beckenstein Fabrics's history is a long one; from a push cart, Samuel Beckenstein laid its groundwork in 1919, on the same Lower East Side’s historic Orchard Street location, and would ultimately develop into one of the world’s most renowned fabric enterprises, Beckenstein Men’s Fabric, Inc. Nearly a century and four generations later, Beckenstein’s grandsons, Neal Boyarsky, President and CEO of the firm and his son Jonathan, have expanded and transformed the once modest, one room store, into a well known fabric enterprise, servicing the entertainment industry, celebrities, athletes and government officials worldwide.

It's remarkable and commendable that both enterprises retained the old style lettering and aesthetic on their joint facade, ignoring the temptation to modernize it.

"Trapped In The Flash" | The Red Strings

On a recent walk about at Washington Square Park, I chanced on performance art type of dance by two talented Chinese women; Jiening (Sophia) Zhu and Jiyun (Annora) Dong, both actors and artists from the NYU Tisch Drama's Experimental Theatre Wing.

Described as "a conversation with red strings, feminism, experimental theater and the body", these graceful and lithe dancers spent about 2 hours showcasing their forthcoming “Trapped in the Flash”, a one-hour off off broadway show that follows the lives of three Chinese American characters from varied historical periods – a photographer, an actress, and a railroad worker. The narrative unfolds through non-linear vignettes that span their experiences in America and their ties to China. 

At first glance, I thought the performance might've been similar to Shibari, the Japanese rope bondage (also known as "kinbaku"), which is a modern form of rope bondage originating in Japan. However, it has nothing to do with it.

The performance "....is about being trapped. It's about trying to escape. It's an exploration about power and space."

There's also "The Red Thread of Fate"; an East Asian belief originating from Chinese mythology. It is commonly thought of as an invisible red cord around the finger of those that are destined to meet one another in a certain situation as they are "their one true love".