YURIKA | BORN TO DANCE

I've reworked the Born To Dance video to incorporate another clip by Yurika, and a half dozen photographs of her in Soho.

Voigtlander 40mm | Fotodiox | ISKCON

During one of my "loops" around Washington Square Park some days ago, I met another photographer acquaintance using a Fuji GFX50R fitted with a Fotodiox adapter to accommodate a vintage lens...possibly a Voigtlander. A conversation ensued about it and as a result I remembered my own old Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 gathering dust since its unloved M9 "parent" was languishing unused due to sensor corrosion.

Faster than one can pronounce its name, I ordered and received the same Fotodiox adapter, which is impressively sturdy and very well built. Hearing there was an ISKCON hoopla in Washington Square Park, I took the combination of the GFX50R and the Fotodioxed Voigtlander for a spin, setting it on f8 to see what happens.

As an experiment, I thought the combination was promising. A few of the resulting frames were soft, but overall I wasn't disappointed. The Voigtlander glass has a special rendering that is -to my eyes- pleasing. Setting aside that the images had the expected vignetting, I look forward to experiment with the combo during a more static event....such as in an urban fashion setting.  Cropping to get rid of the vignetting is necessary, and perhaps I'll set the GFX50R on the 1:1 square image format which will resolve this.

The Offbeat Characters of Washington Square Park

I've been going to Washington Square Park two or three times a week for a few months already; especially at the end of the week, to observe and photograph what has become a visual cornucopia of scenes in a human theater...captivating circus performances by characters that I can only describe as 'offbeat'. Some of them are truly creative, while others perhaps not as much...but taken as a whole, provide wonderful entertainment to the thousands of hard-to-impress New Yorkers and gawking tourists alike.

So here's the first slideshow of these interesting characters which I've photographed. A photo editing software was used to isolate them from the background, so as to remove any distractions. 

Click on the controls to view the slides.

I Am Not A "Virus"

These photographs were made during the AAPI Rally Against Hate in NYC's Columbus Park. March 21, 2021. The protestors demanded justice for the victims of recent shootings at massage businesses and to denounce racism, xenophobia and misogyny.

Hundreds of people of all ages and varied racial and ethnic backgrounds gathered in Columbus Park in Manhattan's Chinatown, and in similar rallies across the country.

All photographs © Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved

Emile Bocian's Chinatown (Manhattan)

 

Photo © Emile Bocian | Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).

The Museum of Chinese in America and The Center for Jewish History have just published a joint online exhibition featuring the photographs of Emile Bocian. These images document New York’s Chinese American community from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s.

During his years as a photojournalist in Chinatown, Bocian amassed an archive of approximately 120,000 photos and negatives, largely featuring the places and faces of his adopted neighborhood; which is the largest Museum of Chinese in America's photograph collection.

MOCA's exhibition website tells us that "Emile Bocian photographed Chinatown from 1974 to 1986, a period of extreme transition for the community. During the 1980s, the neighborhood saw rapid growth due to an influx of immigrants from Guangdong and Hong Kong. The New York Chinese community has continued to evolve and grow, expanding into Chinatowns in Brooklyn (Sunset Park) and Queens (Flushing)."

We are also told that Emile Bocian (1912-1990) was the son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, and was perhaps the only non-Asian resident of Chinatown’s iconic Confucius Plaza apartment complex at the intersection of Bowery, Doyers Street, and Division Street in the 1970s and 80s.

It's particularly interesting to me as I gifted about 40 high resolution monochromatic photographs to MOCA earlier this year. The photographs were made during my weekly walks in Chinatown during the earlier days of the COVID19 pandemic, when its streets were largely empty and devoid of their usual energetic bustle. I expect these photographs -whether they are exhibited in public or not- will serve as a historic record of Chinatown for generations to come. 

Stolen Lives

On June 6, 2020, I learned - through Twitter - of a march that would start in Union Square and end in Washington Square Park. Naturally, history was being made in close proximity so grabbing my cameras, two masks on top of each other and a bottle of water, off I went to wait for it to arrive at the arch.

So here are the photographs that I made during the event. Higher resolution/size can be viewed here.

The emotions during this protest were so electric, so intense and so personal to the protesters that I felt the air vibrating. I had to steady my hands to photograph the above image.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” 

― Martin Luther King Jr

"I Can't Breathe!"

Instead of writing words echoing the evident collective distress at the momentous events, here's a selection of the photographs I made on June 2, 2020 during a peaceful protest march that started in Washington Square Park. They can also be viewed here in higher resolution, and here and here as a multimedia slideshow.

To start, these words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are appropriate:

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."