In the Fall of 2006 I learned that a Spanish company, Cemusa, had been awarded the right to replace the existing New York newsstands with newer structures, all identical in layout, designed to prominently display advertising. The existing newsstands were a hodgepodge, built and repaired over the decades with idiosyncratic components patched on by each owner, buried under layers of paint, bearing the patina of the weather and the gouges left by trucks and cars.
The newsstands are part of what is quaintly referred to as “street furniture”, and it was clear to me that something of the character of our streets was about to be lost with the homogenization of the furniture.
I struggled for a while trying to figure out how to photograph them. My friend Cheyney Thompson, had made a wonderful life-size painting of one of his favorite newsstands, complete with all of the magazines, soda, and candy on display. In a photograph all of those graphics proved distracting to me, too many specific items calling for your attention. Although Moyra Davey did some compelling work—just different. Equally distracting was the social interaction between the people inside the newsstands and the folks stopping to make a purchase. I wanted to show them as architectural objects, anchored to the curb, and in contrast to the grander buildings around them. The approach I came to was to go out hunting for them on the weekends when many of them were closed, and the streets were quieter. Initially I found them on bicycle rides, scouring the neighborhoods and making notes, but as the demolition schedule started picking up in 2008, I obtained a full listing from the city and plotted them all on a map.
Working on this project brought about an important change in my photography. Up until this point I had primarily been photographing with large format view cameras that required a tripod and slow contemplation with your head under the dark cloth looking at the image on the ground glass. This proved impossible with the newsstands, as I often had to dash out into the street and make an exposure, timing my action to the traffic signals. I tried a hand-held 4x5 camera (the same type Weegee used, which I felt was appropriate to the subject matter), but in the end a medium format 6x9cm camera proved the perfect tool—detailed as large format, but agile and cinematic as 35mm. I continue to use that format to this day.
My cameras are all secured in my apartment inside one of those steel lock-boxes that newsstands use to accept after-hours deliveries of magazines and newspapers. I gleefully rescued mine from the dumpster following the demise of a newsstand on Broadway.
I would have liked another year to photograph the newsstands, but the project came to an end as the new and improved Cemusa newsstands were rolled out. There was a sweet all wood newsstand on the corner of Bowery and Canal that I never made a decent photograph of, and I feel a pang of regret each time I pass that corner.
