the brooklyn beefsteak.
Last Friday the NY Times published an article on the revival of the beefsteak, an old, early 20th century tradition of all you can eat, utensil-free beef banquets. Back in the day, it was a mens-only affair; nowadays, ladies and gentlemen alike partake in the carnivorous debauchery. The newer versions of this range from highbrow (fancy beef + utensils + wine pairings) to very lowbrow (still good beef + no utensils + beer); Daniel and I went to the lower end of the spectrum iteration of this, the annual Brooklyn Beefsteak at the Bell House a couple of weekends ago, and good god, I think I might still have the meat sweats.
In the photo taken for the NY Times article, Daniel and I are just out of the frame in the top left corner. We were sitting next to some of the breadthrowers mentioned in the article — oh yeah, so the meat is served in slices atop pieces of French bread, and you stack the bread (which you don’t eat — it only takes up room that would otherwise be available for the meat) in towers at your table. Three hours of madness, pure beefy madness. It was hard to focus the camera properly, what with steak juices running down my arms. I used my Pentax Spotmatic for the color shots, and switched to Eleanor for black and white, once I’d washed my hands (twice, possibly three times; I smelled like hangar steak for days).
Afterwards, there was much food coma.
Above: Daniel, three hours later.
sunday show and tell.
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Some photos from yesterday’s Not At The Office Sunday. Life is so much better when you’re out and about, lazing away the mid-afternoon with a wine buddy, and getting re-energized with an early evening pizza companion. There are few better ways I can imagine spending a Sunday afternoon: Marshall Stack with Shannon, and then off to Windsor Terrace with Andrew for some pie at the newly-opened Giuseppina, the sister restaurant to Lucali, one of my favorite pizza spots in New York City. Pretty great pizza, with a bright sauce (they gave us an extra bowl of the tomato sauce to dip our crusts in — awesome). The dusky walk up Sixth Avenue back to my neighborhood was full of beautiful fading blue light, a wonderful way to end a mostly quiet weekend.
(On a technical note: I was nervous about this new Kodak Portra 400, which will replace the 400vc and 400nc lines — I worried that the colors would be too saturated, and with too much grain (ie, the worst of both 400vc and 400nc worlds). But to my surprise, the new Portra 400 held up quite nicely in low light, and was only a smidge more vivid and saturated than in the old 400nc. I’m going to experiment this week with the Leica (the photos above were taken with the Nikon) and see how well the new 400 does with the Zeiss Biogon lens. Most curious!)
17 april.
[Eleanor and friends: Vivitar Slim Devil (left) and Diana mini (right), both of which belong to my friend Daniel, and both of which I fully intend to “borrow” some time soon.]
Instead of worrying about work deadlines — of which there are quite a few, since I’m leaving on Friday for a weeklong holiday in Los Angeles — I’ve decided to enjoy my Sunday, of which there is quite a bit of the sun component. The El is with me, as is No-Name (my Nikon FE), and a handful of film that I grabbed a bit blindly from my shelf in the fridge. The weather is also cooperating — nearly 60 degrees, which is something of a miracle given how poorly spring has decided to show itself this year — so I’m optimistic that some good shots will be had. Fingers crossed! And I hope everyone’s done with their taxes!
from the archives: lomo test shots.
I have no idea what the kids are listening to these days; I barely even know what my peers are listening to. My daily soundtrack skews heavily towards college radio/indie rock circa 1992 through 2000 or so, with very few exceptions (oh, Explosions in the Sky, how I love you so). It’s like I’m that old lady who can’t stop talking about dancing the jitterbug back in the day. It would be no surprise, then, that I’ve discovered Fleet Foxes nearly three years after their debut EP and full length albums came out — no surprise, except for the fact that in early 2009, I was actually at one of their shows, and managed to miss their entire set. I don’t exactly regret the reasons why that happened — a bottle of Bowmore figures prominently in this anecdote — but now that all of their upcoming shows have sold out and they’re all over the place, I feel like I missed out on a certain early moment in their fame. Ah well.
I bring this up because their new album is coming out soon, and they’ve released this video for one of the tracks, Grown Ocean, and it’s just …. lovely. Both the track and the video. The video reminded me of my college friends’ super-8 shenanigans, the way that grainy filmstock can capture such wonder in the everyday, even if that everyday was just a lot of hanging out, a lot of being in the company of people with whom you feel absolutely at home with. Seeing the video has also made me realize that I don’t get out of the city enough, that I haven’t taken a roadtrip in ages, that I haven’t seen towns and landscapes roll past me from the window of a train or car or whathaveyou, in what feels like forever.
And so I was going through my older photos while listening to some Fleet Foxes tracks the other night, and was reminded of this test roll on my then-newly-purchased Lomo LC-A, the photos taken on a long leisurely walk with Daniel (human) and Riley (dog) in Prospect Park back in September 2009. And even though it was just a walk through a park, in New York City of all places, not at all pastoral or particularly wild, there’s something particularly …. damp … about the photos, like they could almost be (except for the particularly Northeastern vegetation) somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. And that there’s a hidden meadow somewhere beyond the trees, where you’ll come across five be’flannelled guys with long beards singing churchlike harmonies under misty, grey skies. That’s what I imagine and hear when I see these photos.
Also, these photos — taken with Kodak Gold 200 — make an excellent case for underexposure, which I really ought to experiment with much more than I do. Sometimes proper metering just gets in the way, you know what I mean?
the backdrop project: maurice.
Last Saturday, while waiting for my film to get processed, I spent an hour at Commonwealth Bar, drinking a bit of wine and reading a ridiculously good, heartbreaking novel that you all must get your hands on right this minute. The barkeep and I struck up a conversation, and I took the opportunity to see if he’d like to participate in the Backdrop Project. Let’s blame my excitement over asking a complete stranger if he’d like to take part in a perplexing photography project, and not the wine, on my focusing skills here.
mostly-barred saturday.
Bar seats figured heavily into my Saturday this past weekend: first, a lovely solo brunch at the bar at Maialino, where I ordered the always-wonderful amatriciana al’forno, and paired it with a glass of Rosso Piceno — an indulgence, sure, but sometimes you gotta treat yourself. Later, while waiting for some film to get processed, I sat at the bar at Commonwealth in Park Slope, where I did a bit of reading alongside a glass (er, maybe two) of Pinot Grigio (note to nice bar owners: there are equally inexpensive bottles of Gruner Veltliner that would make much better house whites, ahem). Then, while strolling through Boerum Hill with Daniel, I caught a glimpse of springtime in the trees above; this was en route to Van Horn Sandwich Shop, where we sat at the bar and split some great hush puppies, mac n cheese, and a fried fish sandwich.
Oh, and here’s the man himself, frontside.
the backdrop project: the daniel round.
Daniel and I hit the Bell House twice this weekend: Liam Finn and the tail end of the Luyas set on Saturday night, and then meat madness at the Brooklyn Beefsteak on Sunday. (I still might have the meat sweats from yesterday’s carnivoring (er — more on that another time … maybe))
Anyhow, walking around Boerum Hill and Gowanus provided a varied lot of backdrops for the project, and Daniel proved an obliging participant. This is the first time I’ve experimented with other cameras and film for the project: Kodak Portra 400vc in the Leica, and Fuji Pro 400H in my Pentax Spotmatic — can you tell which photo was taken with which camera?
I’m still working through what sort of backdrop works best for this project, and am wondering if there is a best backdrop at all — the pull-down metal gates offer a nice uniformity, and allow the participant to pop out a bit more in the frame, but backdrops like the brownstone (or, in previous series, promenades and windows) give the photo a broader feel, perhaps with more of a … backstory, as it were. I’m not too concerned about making any kind of firm decision one way or another; at this point, there’s just a lot of fun experimenting, and my friends continue to oblige, so I’m just going to keep shooting and let the project evolve as organically as I can.
the magic hour, early spring.
Commonwealth Bar | 6:00 pm
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Overpass at the 4th Avenue – 9th Street station | 6:30 pm
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On the F train | 6:40 pm
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61 Local Public House | 7:00 pm
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All photos taken with the Leica + Ektar 100 film, last Saturday evening.
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recent miscellany.
It’s been a bit maddening here in the office — I do tax-related work, and consequently, early April is always a bit harried — so I haven’t had a chance to drop my film off at the lab, which is too bad, since I think there might be some Backdrop Project doozies in there that I’m hoping turned out as well as they looked through the camera viewfinder.
But the photographs here, taken over the last few weeks, have made me even more pleased about the Leica and Zeiss Biogon purchases. I’ve been struggling a bit with trying to define — or at least describe — what it is I’m trying to capture at any given moment. And I think having Eleanor has been really good for articulating that vision — wanting to take pictures that feel like photographs, if that makes any sense. Something palpably classic, but very much also in the present. Something intimate, but also something which complete strangers, new observers, can connect and engage with. Black and white film is perhaps a bit better making that vision apparent, but as I work more with color film — especially Ektar 100, and hopefully the Portra 400, which I’m going to try out this weekend — I think I’m getting better, ever more precise, with matching what I see with what the camera+film produce. That’s the hope, anyway.
the backdrop project, round two.
1. Daisy | Brooklyn
2. Mohamed | Midtown
3. Marwa | Midtown
4. Shannon | Brooklyn
5. Marwa | Upper East Side
6. Amin | Midtown
A few more for the Backdrop files. I’ve been experimenting a bit with more unconventional spaces and backdrops; the photos of Marwa and Mohamed were taken indoors, during a trip to FAO Schwartz (weirdly not as terrifying a space as I’d remembered it being; then again, the last time I was in there, it was five days before Christmas 2006 and there was a line out the door). I messed up the aperture on these indoor shots; should not have been quite as open as it was — there was background detail that got washed out. But I’m going to continue with some indoor shooting, just to see if a better aperture setting might allow for more precise backdrops like wallpaper, art, and so on.
I can’t wait for springtime — in general and for the purposes of this project. It’d be nice to take photos of folks sans winter coats! Though I’m amused by the one of Shannon — she’s so bundled up that you can’t actually discern any skin or hair, nothing to make her fully … human.
Marwa’s son Amin happily agreed to take part in the project, patiently standing still while I futzed around with the camera settings. At ten, he’s currently the youngest participant in the Backdrop Project; I’m hoping that when I go home to LA at the end of the month to see my family, my two and a half year old nephew Eli will somehow stay still long enough to take part as well.
hong-an tran 