Football on Richards Street

Shivering a little in the deep mid-winter, I went back into my archives from the early fall for this picture of boys who were pausing from playing football in the street. I love how differences make themselves evident in a group portrait (each subject standing in the same light in front of the same photographer but presenting themselves differently) and in this one they're pretty striking.

Reunited With Raheem

Early in this project I met two boys smoking cigars on a cold morning before school. The portrait I took of them ended up hanging in the Brooklyn Museum and was important to my decision to stick with this Red Hook work. I showed that picture in this August 19 entry. Since last winter I've keep my eyes out for those boys. It turns out my friend Brian ran into them first, but two days later I ran into one of them, Raheem. He had heard from from Brian that his picture was in the Museum and told his friend about it excitedly as I stood there with my camera. It turns out the boys were brothers, Raheem and Raequan, which they hadn't mentioned when we first met last year. Raheem and the friend he was with wanted to be in another picture, and so here they are, with cups this time, instead of cigars. I got Raheem's number and hope to get together with the brothers to give them some prints and hopefully make another portrait soon.

Conover Street At Dusk

Conover Street is one of the last blocks in Red Hook, furthest from the rest of Brooklyn and closest to the bay. It mostly contains small industrial buildings as well as some empty brick apartments waiting to be torn down, and the school where I work. But there are one or two blocks with little wood-frame houses lining one side of the street, facing towards the water. They seem so secret and so nestled and I wonder what it would be like to live tucked in one of their bastment apartments. I took these pictures as the sunset was casting the last bits of light down the cobblestone street.