Places

June 16, 2017

The Urban Lens: ‘Indecent exposure’ at Rockaway Beach in the 1940s

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, we share a set of vintage photos documenting Rockaway Beach in the 1940s. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. These days, beachgoers give nary a thought when stripping down to their skimpy bikinis and short-shorts, but 70 years ago wearing much more modest swimsuits was enough to get you a ticket from the NYPD. Noted LIFE magazine photographer Sam Shere (who's best known for his iconic photo of the Hindenburg disaster) documented this "indecent exposure" phenomenon at Rockaway Beach in 1946. Starting with a sign that reads "wear robes to and from the beach," Shere's series shows women sunbathing in high-wasted two-pieces, men walking the boardwalk in just their shorts, and the way in which these beach bums seem unphased by the cops writing them summonses.
See all the photos here
June 9, 2017

The Urban Lens: Kalliope Amorphous captures the faces of the Upper West Side

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, creative and conceptual photographer Kalliope Amorphous shares her series "Upper West Side Story." Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. "I'm always chasing after something nostalgic and timeless," says Kalliope Amorphous, which is why her long-time home on the Upper West Side was the perfect setting for a portrait study. "There's a strong sense of community here and it feels more like a neighborhood in the classic and old-fashioned sense," the self-taught photographer explains. In this black-and-white series, Kalliope captures the many faces of one of the city's most historic areas, exploring its long-standing energy and evolving residents, as well as her favorite themes of identity, mortality, time, and consciousness.
See the series here
June 2, 2017

The Urban Lens: 1940-50s Coney Island through the eyes of teenager Harold Feinstein

Born and raised in Coney Island, there was never a photographer better primed to capture the neighborhood's vibrancy than Harold Feinstein. "I like to think I fell out of the womb on to the fun park’s giant Parachute Jump while eating a Nathan’s hot dog," he told The Guardian in 2014, just before his passing in 2015. Indeed, Feinstein would take his first photo (using a Rolleiflex borrowed from a neighbor) at age 15 in 1946, beginning what would become an unwavering love affair with documenting the whizz, whirl and insatiable life that permeated his beachside locale. Although Feinstein would eventually move on to other subjects in various parts of New York City and the globe, over his nearly 70-year career he would always return to Coney Island for inspiration. "Coney Island was my Treasure Island," he said. Feinstein's Coney Island photos cover more than five decades, but ultimately his 1940s and 1950s snapshots--those taken when he was just a teenager--would cement his status as one of the most important photographers recording life in post-war America. Ahead, the Harold Feinstein Photography Trust shares highlights from this collection.
see the photos here
May 28, 2017

The Urban Lens: Peter Massini tours NYC’s public parks and sports fields from above

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, aerial photographer Peter Massini shares a series of warm-weather shots. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Last summer, multi-disciplinary photographer Peter Massini shared one of his aerial series with 6sqft that captures NYC’s hidden rooftop patios and gardens. In his latest collection, he's taken a look down at the city's more publicly accessible green spaces--parks, ballfields, lawns, and more. Though we've seen many of these locations, like Central Park and Arthur Ashe Tennis Center, more times than we can count, we've never experienced them like this before, from 1,500 feet in the air. By shooting from a helicopter, Peter is able to get a unique perspective on recreation in the city and just how vast some of these locales actually are.
Get a look at this amazing aerial views
May 19, 2017

The Urban Lens: A tourist’s take on NYC in 1979

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, we share a set of vintage photos documenting NYC in 1979. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. In the spring of 1979, a 20-something Australian tourist came to NYC and was immediately struck by its fast pace and no-nonsense attitude ("there seemed to be an unwritten rule not to make eye contact or speak to strangers," he told Gothamist), as well as how much in disrepair parts of the city were, especially Harlem. He documented his experience through a series of color slides, which were recently rediscovered and present a unique view of how exciting, frightening, and mysterious New York was to an outsider at this time.
See all the historic photos
May 12, 2017

The Urban Lens: Travel back to the gritty Meatpacking District of the ’80s and ’90s

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation shares archival images of the gritty Meatpacking District from the 1980s to early 2000s. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. "Few parts of New York City have transformed as dramatically in the last decade or so as the Meatpacking District. Changes in the area are physical as well as spiritual. What was once a deserted ghost town by day, nightlife, sex club, and prostitution hub by night, and bustling workaday center of the Meatpacking industry from early morning to noon is now a glitzy, glamorized center of shopping, dining, tourism, strolling, and arts consumption," says Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The organization recently released a collection of archival photos of the neighborhood's post-industrial grit, "before the Whitney, before the High Line, before Apple and Diane von Furstenberg, even before Sex and the City discovered the neighborhood." Ahead, 6sqft shares these images, from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, which document the major transformation that's taken place in just the past decade.
See all the photos here
May 5, 2017

The Urban Lens: ‘Zombie City’ exposes distracted New Yorkers in a gentrifying city

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, fine art and portrait photographer James Maher exposes the changing face of NYC post 9/11. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. It all started at the University of Madison in Wisconsin with a surprisingly successful fake ID "business," which was James Maher's first introduction to portraiture and Photoshop. After moving back to his hometown of New York post-graduation, Maher studied at the International Center for Photography, assisted commercial photographers, and became a certified tour guide, exploring the architecture and streetscapes of the city. In 2006, he opened his own photography business, combining his varied interests, which also come through in his black-and-white series "Luxury for Lease," where New Yorkers are captured candidly against the background of New York. In it, Maher exposes how quickly things changed in the years after 9/11; instead of coming for "acceptance and freedom" and "a culture of creativity," wealthy persons from the suburbs and elsewhere began to move back "with an insatiable appetite." By snapping photos of distracted New Yorkers, many of whom are zombie-fied staring at their phones, Maher examines the "disconnection, hyper-gentrification, conformity, and consumerism" that's infiltrated our streets.
See the series here
April 21, 2017

The Urban Lens: Explore the whimsical photography of Todd Webb with former LIFE editor Bill Shapiro

"I instantly fell in love with Webb’s work," says former LIFE editor-in-chief Bill Shapiro, "with the beauty he captures, with his sense of the life of the street; with the way he frames both the sweeping, iconic skyline and those small, fleeting moments that define the city that New Yorkers love." These sentiments seem to be shared by just about everyone who encounters the work of Todd Webb for the first time. Webb, most fittingly described by Shapiro as "the best NYC photographer you've never heard of," worked and laughed alongside photography's upper echelon, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Walker Evan, Gordon Parks and Ansel Adams, but unlike his well-known friends, Webb was never interested fame. Instead, he quietly took to documenting life in America, particularly post-war New York between 1946 and 1960.
more on the work of todd webb here
April 14, 2017

The Urban Lens: Zooming in on New York’s captivating corner architecture

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Sam Golanski highlights New York's unique narrow and corner buildings. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. 6sqft recently featured Sam Golanki's photography series "Park Avenue Doormen," where he gave the men who safeguard the Upper East Side's ritzy buildings a chance to step out from behind the velvet ropes and in front of the camera. He's now taken a similar approach--albeit this time with buildings, not people--in his collection "Narrow and Corner Buildings." Choosing to forego iconic structures like the Flatiron Building, Sam instead focuses on small structures off the beaten path that may otherwise be overlooked. "I realized the corner is the center of each block, a place for small businesses, barbershops, and coffee shops," he said, explaining that he didn't pre-plan the series, but rather was drawn to these unique structures while strolling the city.
Get a look at all the photos
April 7, 2017

The Urban Lens: Sid Kaplan shares historic photos of the Third Avenue El coming down

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. This week’s installment comes courtesy of a new exhibit at the Transit Museum, "Deconstruction of the Third Avenue El: Photographs by Sid Kaplan." Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. After the city consolidated its underground subway lines in 1942 (they were previously owned by private companies), fewer New Yorkers were riding the elevated lines. This decreased ridership, along with the fact that the Els ate up valuable street-level real estate and created dangerous dark spaces, led to the city taking down the Second Avenue Elevated line in 1942. In 1955, the Third Avenue Elevated came down as well, catching the eye of a then 17-year-old Sid Kaplan, whose photos of the dismantling are currently on display at the Transit Museum’s Grand Central Gallery Annex. The museum tells us, "From his perch on the roof of an apartment building, or leaning out the window of an office, his images capture a unique perspective of the removal of a hulking steel structure, the hard-working people who dismantled it, and the ever-changing landscape of New York City."
More on the El history, Sid's work, and all the amazing photos
March 17, 2017

The Urban Lens: Enter the vibrant world of New York City’s Sherpa community

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Leandro Viana presents his 'Sherpas' project, a series centered on the Sherpa community of Elmhurst, Queens. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Queens is the second-most populous borough in New York City with well over two million inhabitants. Queens is also New York City's most diverse borough, boasting a population that is nearly 50 percent foreign-born with individuals hailing from over 100 different countries. In all, there are around 500 different languages spoken, some of which can be traced back to the most remote corners of the world. And within this cornucopia of culture are the Sherpa people. While the word Sherpa for many will recall scenes of mountaineers scaling the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, in recent years, more and more Sherpas have planted their flags in the much more level neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens. Indeed, today there are nearly 3,000 Sherpas living in New York City, making for the largest population outside of South Asia. Ahead, Brooklyn photographer Leandro Viana shares his series documenting this unique group in their new land, spotlighting their efforts to preserve their language, religion, culture, and arts so far from home.
See more from Leandro's series here
March 10, 2017

The Urban Lens: Inside McSorley’s Old Ale House, NYC’s oldest bar

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, award-winning photographers James and Karla Murray return for Saint Patrick's Day with a look inside McSorley's Old Ale House. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. With Saint Patrick's Day just around the corner, McSorley's Old Ale House--located in the East Village on East 7th Street by Cooper Square--is readying to welcome a crowd of beer-loving New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike. What sets this watering hole apart, aside from its limited "dark or light" menu, is that it's the oldest bar in the city, a distinction proven after extensive research by the bar's official historian Bill Wander. We recently paid the Irish tavern a visit to capture its historic details such as the original wooden bar and pot-bellied stove; iconic tchotchkes adorning the walls, which run the gamut from shackles worn by a prisoner of war from the Civil War to a horseshoe that legend says came from one of the horses that pulled Abraham Lincoln’s hearse; and the fun-loving crowd that can be seen there on a typical day. We also chatted with Teresa Maher, the very first woman to work behind the bar in 1994.
See all the photos and hear from Teresa
March 3, 2017

The Urban Lens: Fernando Paz puts a skateboard in the hands of aloof New Yorkers

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, photographer and art director Fernando Paz shares his playful series of New Yorkers posing as skateboarders. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. In a city where "fake it 'til you make it" is a mantra shared by many of its inhabitants, Fernando Paz's cheeky photography experiment "Skateboarding loves you too" couldn't have found a better setting. For the series, the die-hard skater approached individuals from all walks of life and asked them to pose with one of his many boards—a strange exercise with the simple goal of placing a familiar but altogether foreign object in the hands of the unassuming. The results, as you will see ahead, are wonderfully humorous, apt, and also bring out what Paz says is the "strong, happy, enthusiastic, hard working, loving, and any positive adjective wanna add" spirit of New Yorkers.
learn more and see the rest of his photos series here
February 24, 2017

The Urban Lens: Will Ellis explores the relics and ruins of Staten Island’s remote edges

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Will Ellis takes us through the relics and ruins of Staten Island's Arthur Kill Road. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Step into the New York section of any bookstore these days and you'll likely see front and center "Abandoned NYC" by Will Ellis, which puts together three years of his photography and research on 16 of the city's "most beautiful and mysterious abandoned spaces." Will's latest photographic essay is titled "Arthur Kill Road," an eerily handsome exploration of the "quiet corners" and "remote edges" of Staten Island. He decided to focus on this thoroughfare as it winds through some of the NYC's most sparsely populated areas, including the defunct waterfront, remnants of historic architecture, and desolate industrial complexes. Here, as Ellis describes it, "the fabric of the city dissolves, and the past is laid bare through the natural process of decay."
See all the photos this way
February 17, 2017

The Urban Lens: Fly over NYC during ‘golden hour’

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Alexey Kashpersky takes us above NYC at daybreak. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. We couldn’t think of a better day than this frigid Friday to lose ourselves in the warm glow of Manhattan during golden hour. Having ventured where many would dare not go—i.e. several thousand feet up in the air in a doorless helicopter—artist Alexey Kashpersky shares photos of his recent sky-high journey above New York, revealing a glorious metropolis at daybreak shining a fiery red and orange. From the piers of Battery Park City to hovering just above the tip of the Chrysler Building, lose yourself ahead in the quiet beauty of our dear city.
see more here
February 11, 2017

The Urban Lens: Sam Golanski gives Park Avenue doormen their moment in the spotlight

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Sam Golanski gives Park Avenue doormen their moment in the spotlight. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Sam Golanski grew up in a small town in Poland, but has been residing in Manchester, U.K. since 2005. Though he thinks New York is "a tough place to live," he fell in love with its energy as a child watching films set in Manhattan from the '60s and '70s. Now all grown up, he comes to New York frequently to visit friends and work on his urban and social photography projects ("I have to admit I shredded a few pairs of shoes by just walking up and down for days everywhere with my camera bags," he says). In his series "Park Avenue Doormen," Sam gives the men who safeguard the Upper East Side's ritziest buildings an opportunity to step from behind the velvet ropes and in front of the camera.
See all the photos
January 20, 2017

The Urban Lens: Inside ‘Little Odessa,’ Brighton Beach’s quaint beachfront Russian community

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Chaz Langley explores the people and establishments that breathe life into Brighton Beach. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. 6sqft recently featured Chaz Langley's photo series "A Stroll in Chinatown," where he captured the neighborhood's unique cultural establishments and the everyday comings and goings of its residents. He's now taken the same approach with Brighton Beach, Brooklyn's beach-front community that's often referred to as "Little Odessa" for its strong Russian community. Langley, a Nashville native who moved to New York almost a decade ago to pursue a career as a singer/songwriter/actor/model, has taken to sharing his location-specific collections on Instagram, integrating his graphic design background in their presentation. From a fruit stand to boardwalk, his Brighton Beach series certainly paints a picture of the neighborhood.
See all the photos here
January 13, 2017

The Urban Lens: Nei Valente’s ‘Newsstands’ shows the changing face of media

By day, Nei Valente is a designer at branding agency Brand Union, but in his free time he photographs street scenes around the city, many of which are taken once the sun has set. In "Newsstands," he captures the changing face of newsstands around the city, exploring how their evolution relates to our shift from print to digital media. Inspired by Moyra Davey's newsstand series of 1994, Valente finds it fascinating how newsstands have changed over the last couple of decades.
READ MORE
December 21, 2016

The Urban Lens: Visiting Gramercy’s Pete’s Tavern, where O. Henry penned ‘The Gift of the Magi’

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, award-winning photographers James and Karla Murray return with a look inside Pete's Tavern, a Gramercy favorite with beautiful holiday decorations and an interesting historical connection to Christmas. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Pete's Tavern lays claim to being NYC's oldest continuously operating bar and restaurant. Established in 1864, it's become famous for the fact that O. Henry is said to have written the classic short Christmas story "The Gift of the Magi" while dining and drinking here. We recently visited Pete's to photograph its lovely holiday decorations and to chat with restaurateur Gary Egan and manager A.C. about the establishment's unique history, connection to O. Henry, and time as a speakeasy during Prohibition.
All the photos and the interview
December 16, 2016

The Urban Lens: Langdon Clay’s 1970s photographs of automobiles also reveal a New York City in decay

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment Langdon Clay shares photos from his new photo book "Cars — New York City 1974-1976." Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. New York as a grimey, crime-ridden metropolis sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel, particularly as we sip our soy lattes and brush artisanal donut crumbs from our lips. But as photos from Langdon Clay's book "Cars — New York City 1974-1976" show, 40 years ago, Manhattan was more about crowbars and break-ins than cronuts and Airbnb. In the 18 years Clay lived as a young man in New York City, he spent three of those years exploring the streets of Manhattan in the middle of the night alone. During those wee hours Clay took to some of the city's most dangerous streets with his Leica camera and a few rolls of Kodachrome, snapping photos of the colorful cars he saw parked against the forlorn urbanscape. Ahead Clay shares with 6sqft some of his favorite images from that time.
Explore the series and hear from Langdon
December 9, 2016

The Urban Lens: Harlan Erskine explores an eerie Midtown after midnight in 2008

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment Brooklyn resident Harlan Erskine highlights the Midtown lobbies and streets past midnight, during the Great Recession. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Though Midtown is now booming with larger-than-life skyscrapers and blockbuster condos along the likes of Billionaires' Row, 9 years ago at the peak of the Great Recession, it was a much different story. In 2008, Brooklyn photographer Harlan Erskine took to the city after dark and documented the ghost town that was Midtown. While New Yorkers are today used to seeing bustling crowds spilling into the streets at all hours, Harlan's photographs depict the polar opposite: empty office lobbies, streets and sidewalks.
photos this way
December 2, 2016

The Urban Lens: Inside the Christmas wonderland that is Rolf’s German Restaurant

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, award-winning photographers James and Karla Murray return with a look inside Rolf's German Restaurant, known for its over-the-top Christmas decorations. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Beginning the last week of September, a six-man team starts the process of adorning Rolf's German Restaurant with 15,000 Christmas ornaments, 10,000 lights, and thousands of icicles. By the first of November, the process of turning this historic Murray Hill restaurant into a holiday wonderland is complete, attracting both locals and tourists who are eager to see the one-of-a-kind display of Victorian-style decorations. We recently paid a visit to Rolf's, capturing everything from dolls found in New England antique shops to 19th century German ball ornaments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we've shared an interview with owner Bob Maisano where he talks about the building's past life as a speakeasy during Prohibition, German history in NYC, and what makes Rolf's a unique holiday destination.
All the photos and the interview with Bob
November 18, 2016

The Urban Lens: Bushwick’s ‘Bizarre’ world of burlesque, acrobats, and fire spinners

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Meryl Meisler captures the artists and performers of Bushwick's bar and event space Bizarre. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. When he moved to NYC, French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire squatted in a boarded up Bushwick building until he eventually owned it. Along with friend Gregory Baubeau, he decided to turn the building into a bar, performance space, and gallery inspired by the wild stories of Greenwich Village's underground, avant-garde Café Bizarre. Their own BIZARRE opened in 2013, and shortly thereafter they exhibited photographer Meryl Meisler's iconic shots of the neighborhood in the glam/gritty '70s and '80s. Now, Meisler has come together with Sauvaire and Baubeau for a new exhibition that showcases the "assorted madness and the unexpected" of present day BIZARRE. They've shared their energetic photos with 6sqft, capturing all those who make the venue special--the acrobats, artists, burlesque, circus, drag kings and queens, fire spinners, magicians, musicians, poets, patrons and more--and Meisler has given us the inside scoop on this unique scene.
See the collection here
November 11, 2016

The Urban Lens: Chaz Langley captures the people and places that make Chinatown tick

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Chaz Langley explores the people and establishments breathe life into Chinatown. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Nashville native Chaz Langley moved to New York to pursue a career as a singer/songwriter/actor/model, but along the way began snapping iPhone photos of his adopted city as another creative outlet, finding the process therapeutic. Through his Instagram account, he tells the stories of the people, places, and things that inspire him, using his other skill set of graphic design as a way to curate his collections. In "A Stroll in Chinatown" he captures the unique cultural establishments of Chinatown and the everyday comings and goings of the neighborhood's residents.
See all the photos here
November 4, 2016

The Urban Lens: Ira Fox travels back to the ’90s for the East Village’s Wigstock drag festival

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Ira Fox takes us back in time to the East Village of the '90s. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Ira Fox is best known for his use of black-and-white photography and cinematic approach, credited to his background in theater. He focuses on urban New York scenes and portraits, one example of which is his series "Wigstock at the Palladium." Wigstock was the annual Labor Day drag music festival in the East Village that was co-founded by Lady Bunny and hosted the likes of Crystal Waters, RuPaul, and Leigh Bowery in the '80s and '90s. In his shots, which were taken outside the famed Palladium nightclub, Ira captures the diverse characters who partook in the jubilant event during the '90s.
See all the photos here and find out about a special promotional offer for 6sqft readers