I have long been fascinated with Graffiti and the derelict buildings where it’s common to find “Aerosol Art” as it is affectionately referred too.   I did a bit of research some years ago and planned a Sunday trip to New York City with a good friend and fellow Large Format photographer Tim Jones to explore graffiti locations in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn.  We came upon many areas of street graffiti, however, parked cars lined the streets and prevented any graffiti access without having to include the cars in the photographs.  Sometime during that first day, March 24, 2013, we did a quick mobile search for other graffiti locations in New York City. Low and behold we were directed to a location less than 10 miles away in Long Island City called 5 Pointz, aka 5PtZ, we had struck the mother lode in an abandoned 200,000 sq. ft 5 story building.  “Taggers” regularly came from all over the world in the hopes of a meeting to thumbnail their idea with MeresOne, the self-appointed curator/organizer and world-class graffiti artist who began 5PtZ some twelve years earlier. The name 5 Pointz symbolizes the coming together of the 5 boroughs of New York City for the purpose of an outdoor “art center”.

     Tim and I quickly recognized the power of the brightly colored graffiti could be when captured via large film cameras and portrayed in wet process Silver Gelatin photographs.    I have returned many times to photograph the ever-changing face of 5PtZ and have amassed over 40 compositions of juxtaposition works of art in conjunction with the symmetry of the abandoned warehouse, virtually everything is covered with graffiti including garage doors, street light poles, fire escapes, vent stacks and even the dozen or so steel upright girders which support the overhead tracks of the # 7 train.  One of those support girders is the lead image in this month’s Story Behind Every Photograph. 

    The long and narrow building was perfectly situated as one side of the building was in shadow during the morning hours and the other side in the afternoon, as a photographer I never worried about fighting distracting shadows created by the sun.  As it happened, I made one of my favorite images on my very first visit which is shown below.   I have always loved to photograph old and derelict structures, add to that the sweeping graphic lines created by the graffiti it was easy to see wonderful grey tonalities in front of me.   I was drawn to this particular image because of the numerous tonalities of the glass window frames and the dark divider between the windows and especially the upside-down face in the lower right.  Here in the Western Hemisphere, the lower right quadrant of visual art is considered to be the most powerful area of any composition. 

     Usually, by midday on Sundays 5PtZ would be overrun with visitors and at one time it was a destination stop for a New York City tourist attraction service.   Towards the end of my year and a half run at 5PtZ I would take days off of work during the week to alleviate the crowds, usually arriving before 7 am and leaving by mid-afternoon.  In fact, one of those days off was Friday, November 15, 2013.  Little did I know that on Tuesday, Nov. 19 after months of feuding with the artists the owner of the warehouse under the cover of night and police protection hired contractors to whitewash the building and all its incredible works of art !!    Lawsuits were filed by a number of aerosol artists and I will close this blog with those details.

     On the 3rd or 4th visit with Tim, we had large cameras set up on the access streets we encountered a man who always seemed to show up midmorning to “check things out”.   Turns out, Jonathan Cohen, aka MeresOne had struck a deal with the owner of the building Jerry Wolkoff 12 years earlier to use the building as a canvas for “taggers” to share their vision and talents.   Cohen reserved certain areas for long-standing art to remain and other areas that could be freely painted over, from aerosol artists from all over the world !!   One day I approached Cohen and explained what we were doing and he had no problem with our mission.   I became enough of a regular on Sundays amongst scores of digital photographers that I developed a relationship with MeresOne where we would talk about art and the unusual places it can be found. I brought some of my own imagery down on another visit to seek out MeresOne’s opinion as I began to have reservations about whether I was plagiarizing other’s artwork.   He immediately told me how much he loved the bright colors being turned into grey tones and also how I incorporated features of the physical building into the composition, he suggested I’d created my own artform of and about 5PtZ.   You may see the opening image and large portion of my New York City portfolio at the Camera Commons gallery in Dover, New Hampshire during the months of Sept thru October, artist reception Sept. 30th.

     With Cohen’s endorsement, building a portfolio of images of 5PtZ became a passion, I selected many large-scale areas merging various graffiti scenes by different artists into the physical features of the warehouse.   The opening image in this month’s Blog is what I call a “walk by”, in other words, many people and photographers alike would simply walk by a steel girder that supports the # 7 train connecting Queens to Manhattan.   This particular girder had a lyrical rendering of a tree and its roots.  I felt the only way to portray a metaphor of sorts of 5PtZ was to have only the graffiti in focus and all surrounding parts of the image out of focus, this created enormous technical challenges for the size camera I use.   For the photographers amongst us, consider this scenario, I used a 355mm lens on 5×7″ film, about 3 feet from the girder using the entire 5×7″ film area, the depth of critical focus at f 11 is likely less than one inch, add to that a bellows extension where additional exposure has to be calculated due to light falloff make this image especially rewarding and an important part of my 5PtZ story.

     One of my most favorite memories of my time at 5Ptz happened one early afternoon when I had my camera setup as seen here waiting for people to pass.   I saw out of the corner of my eye a photographer with a pro level tripod and good size digital camera hanging off his shoulder.  He kept looking my way, I hoped he did not make his way over to my large wooden camera set up in the middle of the street to chat me up.   I have little knowledge of digital cameras and even less patience for those who stand in a spot for a few seconds, take a picture and suddenly call themselves photographers merely because they have the latest equipment !!  By this time of day, there are photographers everywhere, as you can imagine 99 % are digital / cell phone shooters and yours truly ( 1% ).  Sure enough, he makes his way over to me, my Deardorff is set up exactly where you see it, a much larger crowd of people, I am in the waiting mode for various things to happen.    He says nice camera, how old, how large and so forth.  I’m not too chatty as I know I am way out of my element with the equipment he has.  Finally, he says, “don’t you think that digital quality has equaled if not surpassed your film”?  He continues, “do you know how many MegaPixels this Nikon has”?  No idea I tell him, he says “36 Mega Pixels, you realize how much resolving power that is”?  (not in my cornflakes dude!)   Instantly I tell him it’s got nothing to do with resolving power, it has everything to do with how the film “accepts” light and can render to a much greater degree “roundness and shape”.  A blank look on his face, finally says “I’ve never heard it explained that way.”  

     Then, as if the Analogue Gods were watching over this entire exchange, hot afternoon by now and out of nowhere comes a tiny little man, easily 75 – 85 yrs old and dressed in a winter sport jacket, I could see as he approached my camera with wonderment in his eyes, without a word he comes around to the front of my camera, obviously knowing exactly where to look for the nameplate and says “I knew it was Deardorff !!  He continues, “I worked my whole life for Look magazine and we had 8×10 Deardorffs all over the studio, what a treat it is to still see one in use.”  I don’t recall if the digital guy ever uttered another word as he just kinda of vanished!

     Sadly, 5PtZ would end on that fateful day in November of 2013.  As a final resolution to the incredible art made at 5PtZ by and the angst endured by the taggers a judge awarded a $ 6.7 million dollar settlement this past February to twenty or so taggers whose work was destroyed by the developer, see this Judge awards 5PtZ artists

Before and after November, 19, 2013