Todays Magnum In Motion Meeting

To give you a better insight into my work at Magnum Photos I am posting some photos of todays weekly meeting of the Magnum In Motion team.
Magnum In Motion is a department of Magnum Photos found about a year ago in New York City. The Magnum In Motion team is responsible for all kinds of New Media work within Magnum. Its focus lies on digital storytelling. To give you a good example of what our teams does you might want to take a look at the last online-feature Magnum In Motion did. It's a multimedia story with photographs and comments by Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths about Vietnam at Peace. It was published on the websites of "The New York Times" and the "International Herald Tribune". A really interesting and worthwhile experience.
Our team (in which I feel rather integrated already) works on more very, very interesting projects. Unfortunately I can, at this point, not give any details on them... The competitors could read this blog as well... :-)

The pictures above show our weekly meeting in which we discuss queued to do's for the week. The first picture shows Claudine Boeglin, Bjarke "BJ" Myrthu and another intern (well the back of him) Guillaume. We are holding this meetings in the backoffice area of the office which is also a nice place to sit down, drink a coffee or eat your lunch.
The folders which can be seen in the background contain some of the probably most interesting things in the office. All contact sheets of the photographers which belong to the New York City office of Magnum. Kind of a magical ressource.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:37 PM | Comments (9)

Dance Africa 2005 in Brooklyn

After my Memorial Day experience yesterday I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Victor, my host. He works at BAM and invited me to come over to see the closing ceremony of Dance Africa, America’s longest-running annual festival of dance, music, film, art, and culture from Africa and the African Diaspora.

I was really amazed when I arrived there. The whole place in front of the BAM and the streets around it have been closed for this purpose. A huge mass of people have been waiting to see the actors, the dancers and musicians of Dance Africa on the closed off place doing there performences on the street. On the surrounding streets was one huge street fair with food and clothes.
The light was wonderfull, enforcing all those rich colors of the African dresses. You could feel the good and peaceful spirits in the air, all sorts of people hanging out together, enjoying the rythms, the dances, food and drinks and the sun of course. A very nice and relaxed multicultural festival in the middle of Brooklyn! A huge contrast to my earlier Memorial Day experience.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 07:48 PM | Comments (9)

Memorial Day Service in Co-Op City

I started my day off by calling my girlfriend to wish her a happy birthday! We've been talking for a while and finally used our webcam for the first time. These services suck! Calling using Skype works pretty well. As soon as you want to use another service like Yahoo Mesenger to use a webcam as well everything gets a mess. But still funny to see the other one on a small window on your screen even if it's most of the time like a tableau.

I attended the Memorial Day Service in Co-Op's City veterans memorial park later. Memorial Day is a patriotic holiday in the United States. A day to honor and remember Americans who gave their lives while serving the U.S. in a war.
Kind of strange for me to see how people celebrate the fallen soldiers, to hear different kinds of hymns and battle songs, to hear speeches where people talk about their heros, about the brave men and women who serve their country. Speeches where they talk about freedom and democracy, where they state that freedom is not free...
Rather strange and way too much patriotism in my European eyes. But as far as things are not only black and white, as always there is another side as well.

I met Mrs. Carmen Raquel Natal at the Memorial service, an elderly woman living in Co-Op City. She was visibly touched by the ceremony. I started to talk to her and she told me that her grandson who can be seen on the photo standing together with his father and herself is in Iraq at the moment. Efraim Luis Natal is 23 years old. He has been in Iraq for one and a half years already, intermitted by one vacation at home. He got a two months old daughter he didn't yet see because she was born while he was away.
I guess it's hard to form an opinion about something like these patriotic acts as long as there are people like Mrs. Natal who have a beloved one in a war or who lost a family member there. Who knows how I'd act if I came into such a situation myself.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:51 PM | Comments (2)

Tasty and fresh - Fulton Fish Market Part II

Two more shots from my night at the Fulton Fish Market. See others and some information on the market in the previous post.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:36 PM | Comments (4)

Tasty and fresh - Fulton Fish Market Part I

I visited the Fulton Fish Market for the first time in June 2004 and now for the second time yesterday night. I like the atmosphere of fish markets so much, I like the smell (yes I do - as long as I can get rid of it later) and most of all I find the people who are working there so interesting. The way you can see how hard work over a lot of years left tracks in peoples faces, the way you get to hear shouts, laughs and sometimes offensice comments from one salesman to the other. It's interesting to see how trading is going on.

The Fulton Fish Market was opend on February 5th in 1822. Its final weeks broach in its 184th year of existance. The Fish Market on Fulton street, very close to the Brooklyn Bridge is to be moved to a new location at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. The move there was first scheduled for January, was then displaced to June and will now take place in September as Ziggy Galarza, a salesman at one of the many fish companies told me.

Even tough the Fulton Fish Market is most likely the oldest place in New York that's still doing the same thing as in its beginning, its told to be Americas largest Fish Market. More than 4.5 million pounds of fish moves through it each week.

Since I thought that the Fulton Fish Market would close in June I wanted to take the chance and go there one more time. So I left my apartment in the north east of the Bronx at about 01:30 in the morning, took the bus to Pelham Bay Park, went to 125th street where Markus Hartel, a German photographer living in New York, picked me up to go there. I had a good night at the market and since I heard that it will remain there until September I'll definitely come back.

I got the morning off work today to be able to go back to my partment, take a shower and change cloths. The cloths smell awfull, I had the smell of fish in my nose for quite a few hours although it must have been imagination... But what I can say for sure (its been affirmed by a colleague) is that my camera body still has a touch of fish on it.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:23 PM | Comments (6)

Woman waiting for a cab on 5th Avenue

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 06:29 PM | Comments (3)

Plugging in the music - havin a great day at work

Some thoughts about good music generated vibes and my work at Magnum today... I left work at about 6:30 pm today. It was raining and I've been tired so I decided to exceptionally afford a 4 dollar ride home to Co-Op City with the Manahatten Express bus instead of riding on the train, changing it three times, waiting for the bus and get home an hour and forty minutes later. Beside the 4 dollars for the Express bus which is rather expensive it's a real pain to use it in the morning. I did that once and it took me like for hours because of the traffic. It's so pleasing using it in the evenings. It saves about forty minutes of commute, there is no changing of transportation, seats are padded, the back rests are high enough to comfortably lean back and it's quiet in there.

When sitting on the bus i plugged in my headphones (it was the first time to have music with me since I arrived in New York) and started to listen to Badmarsh & Shri to calm down a bit. Very nice mix of trip-hop, funk and big beat. Closed my eyes and started to chill. It realy got my in a relaxed and quite mood after a long day at work, missing my girlfriend and still being excited about New York City life all day long (24 hours of excitment is strenuously as well).
Somewhen while driving through the South Bronx I changed to listen to Gentleman, a Reggae artist I just love. That got me into wonderful happy vibes still being totaly relaxed. While listening to this damn good music of Gentleman I started to think about my work at Magnum Photos.

I must admit that I enjoy my work there so much. It's not only learning a lot about photography but it's also about the way I am treated there. The way people respect me and the work I do. I am in the privileged position to work within a department that does many interesting projects, exploring new ways of communication, having responsibility, working together with nice people who all share a passion for photography, being able to bring in my own ideas. I today realized how worthwile it is to get acceptance and recognition for your work. Feeling that you do a good job and your colleagues not only mention but also appreciate is means a lot. It contributes to a very good working atmosphere.

I am not earning any money as an intern but all the knowledge I gain and the way I am able to do my work means a lot as well! Probably more motivation than getting money and superficial encouragement only. So keep it rockin baby.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:53 PM | Comments (2)

A couple with their baby on the 4 train

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:27 PM | Comments (5)

Shadows of buisy people

Since my last two posts have been color photography I needed to post a black and white photo again. I do not feel very comfortable using color in my pictures. It doesn't mean I don't like color, I just personally find it very hard to do good looking color shots. I admire good color photography like the ones of Alex Webb who does not only do beautifull color photography but also has a very unique style. He is of course only one example that just came to my mind.

Since I had a realy nice and relaxing week with my girlfriend I will now focus more on my own photography again. Just updated my list of possible topics I want to work on. There is so much to do... Oh and yes the above photograph is dark. It's meant to be!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:51 PM | Comments (3)

316 (Threehundredandsixteen) American National Flags

This post should have originally been titled "The last Weekend on Long Island before my girlfriends return home" but I decided to change the titel to the above one because the new title is related to the weekend in Long Island as well and those flags have been very interesting to us.

As a end of this weeks visit of my girlfriend Karin (she had to leave this evening to fly back home) we decided to spend the weekend in Montauk, a small village on Long Island.
After we knew that we wanted to go to Long Island we decided to rent a car for the weekend. Better coming around from beach to beach or from village to village in case of we wouldn't like the place we where going. So we got up Saterday morning, checked the trip route on Google, wrote everything down and left the apartment to go the Hertz, picking our car up.

We had our first nice experience while waiting for the bus in Co-Op City. A family of geese were walking around the green areas. I often saw them while passing by Section Five of Co-Op City which is directly next to the Hutchinson River but I never saw them here in Section One. Section Five is rather far away and there is a highway in between... A few minutes after we came to the bus station the geese (on the other side of the street yet) decided to move over to a new meadow and slowly started to cross the street in a perfect line. One after the other. Traffic had to stop - they didn't seem to be in a hurry. A very nice situation.

However, we arrived at Hertz on East 90th street to pick our rental car up about an hour and a half late. I've already been thinking about the possibility that they might have no car left from the smallest budget range. Lucky as we were they didn't, we got a free upgrade and finally sat into a brand new, huge and damn comfortable Volvo XC 70 including a GPS Navigational System. I still had the prejudice that these systems do not work well and probably lead us somewhere we didn't want to go. But luckily it worked very well and we found our way to Long Island.

To refere back to this posts title, we somehow started to count american national flags after leaving the city. We've been looking for flags on the roadside flying in front of houses, at gas stations, in car windows or on top of company buildings. We started to count while driving on the highway which was not such a big deal, but when we came to Long Island and drove through villages and towns we got really buisy. While we drove about 140 miles (approx. 225km) we counted 316 american flags. I am sure we missed some since we didn't count in New York City and in the town of Montauk. That's an amazing number isn't it? America is completely different in terms of patriotism than every other country I've been to. If you for example use an Austrian national flag in my homecountry to show that you are proud of this country everyone looks at you as if you would have got crazy. Personally I feel a bit uncomfortable with too much patriotism and bonds to a certain country.

Despite the fact that Karin had to leave this evening our weekend on Long Island was great. Montauk is a very beautiful place, it's quiet (at least at this time of the year), the beaches are very nice and clean and the atlantic ocean... What should I say... I love the atlantic ocean. And since Montauk has one of the busiest fisher harbors in New York State there are also some great places for delicious seafood. I got the second best tuna steak (after one I had in Portugal) of my life in a place called "Lenny's on the Dock" which is located directly at the harbor.

We found a nice small Motel with the sea just across the street in which we stayed for the night. We wanted to visit the lighhouse in the morning but there have been too many people there and the entrace was 16 dollars. Too much if you can have a beautiful beach for free. The way back to New York was not that good. Too much traffic, rain and a both of us have been in a thoughtful mood since we won't see each other for two months. But we got a new counting idea for our next trip. The next time we travel in the States by car we are going to count the yellow "Support Our Troops" and "God Bless America" ribons sticked to a lot of cars.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:39 PM | Comments (5)

Pictures from our Day in Brooklyn Heights

After a cloudy day without sunshine the sun finally came out when we arrived at the river promenade in Brooklyn Heights in the evening.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:50 AM | Comments (3)

Spending my day off with my girlfriend

I am sitting in an Internet Cafe on Times Square right now. Today I took a day off work since my girlfriend will leave New York on Sunday evening and I wanted to spend some time with her. We had a very nice and relaxing day. Getting up late, enjoying an american style breakfast and walking around the city.
We went to one of those huge 24h supermarkets before having breakfast to get some eggs, sausages and salad. It's a real experience to go into such a supermarket... They do not sell three or four different kinds of ricec risps but fifteen. You can't only choose out of let's say six different sorts of toilet paper but you can choose out of twelf different sorts... No matter what you want to buy, everything is so much bigger than in Europe. I mean I am a big guy myself but no wonder that there are a lot more people living unhealthy in the US than in Europe looking at the sizes of all articles and how much sugar they added. Food is very expensive in general, but if you'd like to get some healthy food, some quality food it's even more expensive. It's hard to afford that. Well this might also just be a lame excuse for being undisciplined...

However, after having breakfast (we even tried ready made scrambled eggsd out of a bottle...), we took the Manhatten Express bus to 23rd Street, got into the 6 train to Bowling Green changed to the 4 train which took us to Brough Hall-Court Street. We didn't know anything about this area. We just wanted to have a little walk in Brooklyn, seeing the Manhatten skyline from the water promenade and walking back over Brooklyn bridge.
Brooklyn Heights, the part we have been wandering around is such a nice place! It's kind of another world, everythings seems to be so much more relaxed and a lot quiter than in Manhatten. There are lot's of nice small houses, lot's of trees and small streets which are not too crowded. Coming to the river blew us off imideatly. The houses there with those small gardens and balconies offer a great view onto the famous skyline of Manhatten. Would be interesting to know if people living there still enjoy this view. I am sure this is a rather expensive area to live in. But it seems to be sooo nice...

After walking back to Manhatten we took the train to Times Square and visited Madame Tussauds which was good fun. Don't know what we are going to do after I finished my post. Karin is in a CD shop right now were I'll pick her up now. Expect photos from today to be posted later.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:25 PM | Comments (4)

Star Wars Line Up at the Ziegfeld Theater

These are pictures from the Star Wars Line Up in front of the Ziegfeld Thater in Manhatten. About 250 people from 9 different countries have been waiting there for the last 19 days to raise money for the Starlight-Starbright Children's Foundation. Yesterday evening was the final line up to see the premiere of Episode III. Check out more information on the Star Wars Line Up in New York City at nyline.org.
It was quite interesting to see so many people waiting to see a Star Wars movie. My girlfriend Karin enjoyed it although she is a little sad she couldn't see it... Her son Fabian saw the movie already about 10 hours before Star Wars fans in America were able to. The premiere was on May 18th at 8:00 pm in Vienna.
I'll have a day off work tomorrow. Enjoying the last three days of my girlfriends visit!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 08:01 PM | Comments (10)

Election day in Co-Op City

Today was the long awaited election day in Co-Op City. There are 5 people to be elected for the Co-Op City Board of Directors. Every Co-Op City resident is allowed to vote for his or her favourite candidate in a voting booth located in the lobby. There is one voting booth in all 35 buildings of Co-Op City. And they look really weired, seem to be from the 70ties... To make sure the elections are held correctly there must be an election worker from both parties, from the Democrats as well as from the Republicans, present at all time.

It's a day for which I've already been waiting since I arrived in New York. The special thing about these elections are the election campaigns held in the forefield. Never saw such dirty and shallow campaigns full of attacks. The campaign flyers which have always been shoved under the appartments door did not only attack the competitive political party but they attacked certain persons personally in a very uneloquent way. I kept all these flyers I got for future references... :-) I don't yet know who did it, but I've been told that this is not really important since things never change.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 06:58 PM | Comments (1)

42nd Street Subway Station

This is actually an image I took last Friday night. It shows the subwaystation on 42nd street. A whole bunch of people even on Fridayu night... Since I was working all day long and my girlfriend is already waiting for me I have to hurry up and catch her. More photographs and notes from New York tomorrow!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 06:06 PM | Comments (7)

My girlfriend in New York - First Evening

My girlfriend Karin arrived yesterday evening to visit me in New York for a week!
While I had to get up at 7:00am to get to work in time, Karin could sleep untio 1:00pm. How lucky she is... She visited me at work in the afternoon, I showed her around the Magnum office and we had lunch at this good Cuban restaurant (already mentioned in an earlier post) on the other side of the street. Back to work for me, Karin went downtown for a little shopping tour in SoHo (of course she didn't buy a lot... well... not that much... well...).

We met in front of the Empire State Building after work to get on to the observatory platform viewing New York from above. We went to Starbucks, having a coffee and a Lemon Cake before lining up to get our tickets. We finally got them and made our way to a room through which all visitors are planted to get their picture taken in front of a ugly "Empire State Building Wallpaper". You are not allowed to use your camera in their, but you may of course purchase this photo after going down again for 13 bucks. However, I took a picture of us while they were taking ours. They started to get a little nervous but let us do anyway.

The two pictures above show the northern view (Thanks for correcting me David) from the top of the Empire State Building and the two of us posing for a self-portrait.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:52 PM | Comments (10)

20th Annual AIDS Walk New York Part 1

About 45.000 people have been walking a 10 kilometer (6.2 miles) course in New Yorks Central Park today to raise funds for different Aids Service Organizations. The weather was not that good, the spirits and the mood certainly was!
The picture above shows participants of this years 20th Annual Aids Walk in New York City after finishing the course.
I will post more informations and photos of todays event in a couple of days. Have to pick my girlfriend up from JFK Airport now. She comes to visit me for a week! :-)

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 09:05 PM | Comments (3)

Posing for a photo inside the Empire State Building

Since I really needed to get my hair cut I went to a barber on Astor Place which was recommended by Victor, the friend I am staying with. If you stand in front of the shop there are steps going down to the basement level which is a huge room in which approximately 50 barbers work. They allow you to walk around watching the barbers doing there work and pick the one you like best. Or you can just ask who is free at the moment and take him as I did. José was the one who cut my hair, a friendly man around 35, came from Cuba to New York when he was 2 years old. He worked fast, good and prices are very cheap. I only had to pay 13 dollars for my hair cut.

After that I wanted to get on to the observation platform from the Empire State Building. Looking at the city from above... Since there was a long line waiting to get up and the usual time until you reache the top is about 60 to 75 minutes I changed my mind and spend this time watching tourists taking pictures. Interesting pastime. The man on the photo poses to get his picture taken in front of the american flag and a model of the Empire State Building.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:27 PM | Comments (3)

New York Photobloggers Meetup last evening

I went to a meeting of New York City Photobloggers last evening. It was good fun and I met a lot of people. After havin a drink or two in a bar on the Lower East Side we went to one of New York's most famous delis. The "Katz's Deli" which looks rather interesting and food seems to be excellent. Enjoy some photos of yesterday evening.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 06:37 PM | Comments (6)

Statistics for New York Photoblog - Thanks for your support

In terms of this Photoblog I am overwhelmed by all the positive feedback I got and all the visitors coming to my site. Thanks to all of you who visit my blog from time to time and keep me rolling! And thanks to all the sites which mentioned my project or linked to me, to all the people who support me by spreading the word. From the day I launched this website until today I already had 2.886 unique visitors wich is an amazing number for such a new website! Without the help of sites and people such as Design is Kinky, Photoblogs.org, Visual Orgasm, Rion, Coudal.com, Joes NYC, Rachel James, Lost Art, The Rohan and Mads Pedersen this would not have been possible.

Plese let me know if you have any ideas for this blog. How could it get more interesting for you, what's missing? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail. Thank you!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:07 PM | Comments (2)

After two weeks in New York City

I've been in New York for two weeks already. Started to work at Magnum, spend about 50 hours on my way to and from work, met a lot of realy nice and interesting people, took a bunch of photos and even experienced a machine-gun shooting in my neighborhood just yesterday night while looking out of the window (nothing bad happend so far).

So what can I say after my first two weeks in the Big Apple? Everything seems to work out really well. I enjoy my work at Magnum Photos a lot. It's such an interesting place to work, the possibilities to learn are enormous. Being surrounded by these photographs all day long, doing photo research in Magnum's database as well as in photobooks published by Magnum or their photographers, learning from my colleagues through talking about photography, learning how to edit pictures through doing it, all these things are very enjoyable. I did some print- and webdesign already, helped resarching stories, shared ideas and framed prints. One of the best things about my new working surrounding is that all people here are really interested in photography. Some of them do take pictures on their own, others don't. All of them share a deep passion for the medium!

Other than that I do also enjoy my stay in New York City in my spare time. Watching people on the subway, walking round the streets on weekends, trying to capture this speciall something which makes this city so famous. What I mentioned is that it is a lot easier to get into touch with people, some just start talking to you on the street. If they don't but you'd like to know a little more about them start talking on your own. Interesting talks can arise out of that.
And there is something going on in this city all the time. Whenever I tried to attend a special event I heared about before, I never made it because there was something else coming in my way which was even more interesting to me.

Regarding photography, another thing which has to be mentioned is that you've really got so much more possibilities in New York than you've got in Vienna. There are lot's of museums, galleries, schools and of course photographers around. I'm sure New York is a rather tough place to work as a photographer since there are probably more of them then somewhere else. Never saw such a big density of people with their professional Leicas, Canons, Nikons or whatever around their necks.

I am in New York City now but I didn't get used to it so far. There is always something new to discover, something new to mention, new projects to develope, new people to meet. This is the way it should be.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:03 PM | Comments (5)

Tourists snapping pictures on Times Square

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:18 PM | Comments (3)

Family portrait in the subway station on 125th Street

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 09:11 PM | Comments (3)

Playing chess in Washington Square Park

As mentioned in my last post I've been around Washington Square Park this weekend. When I came to the south east part of the park I saw quite a few people there playing chess. Most of them have been playing speed-chess against the clock. And there was one man playing chess with a boy who might have been about 10 years old. He didn't use a clock. I stopped and watched them playing two games before I asked to take some pictures. The boy's father came over while the third game was going on. They have been french tourists and already came there the day before to play chess with this guy called Norman.

After the game finished I introduced myself to the man sitting on this small bench. We where talking for a while and Norman told me that he comes to the park every weekend, usually very early in the morning to try and catch his favourite table. Competitors are tough.
Norman told me that he's trying to make a few bucks through the game. He doesn't like speed-chess, he rather wants to teach chess. And if he loses a game he doesn't charge for it since he was not able to teach his students.
Norman is 58 and originaly came from Louisiana to New York. His parents moved here when he was still a kid. He asked me if I'd like to play a game of chess with him. I had to reject since I don't know how to play chess at all. He showed me the basic moves and I told him to come back next weekend to have my first lesson.

The following photographs show other people playing chess in Washington Square Park.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:26 PM | Comments (7)

Reflection of Washington Square Park in a window

This photography shows a reflection of Washington Square park in a window of the New York University. I was wandering around SoHo and the West Village today and spend quite a while in Washington Square Park. Washington Square park is for sure a place to meet very interesting people. I met a guy called Norman who's around the park every weekend to play and teach chess for a few bucks. He told me that he doesn't charge his teaching lesson if he loses. He was not good enough to teach his students then... More on Norman to come in the next days.

I have also been to the Leica Gallery to see the second part of the exhibition "Witness to a Century". A collection of photographs from the 1960ties to 2005. The exhibiton is still open to the public until May 14. So visit soon at free admission. It is located at 670 Broadway, Suite 500 in Greenwich Villag.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 01:28 AM | Comments (6)

Getting Carl De Keyzer a coffee

I had a really good day today. Well, actually yesterday since it's past midnight. Work was good fun, I helped to frame some prints for an exhibition when Carl De Keyzer came into the office. He just arrived in New York since he'll be working in the States for a month and had to pick something up. When he came over to say hello I introduced myself and told him that we've been e-mailing about two months ago when I purchased his 1989 book "Homo Sovieticus" on e-bay. Nice little story on this purchase on e-bay:

I was trying to get a copy of this book for a while. Couldn't figure out where to get one since it's out of print until someone offered a signed and new example on e-bay. I was the only bidder and managed to get it for just 15 Euro. Just a minute or two before the auction was over I mentioned that this guy also sold a dual processor Power Mac G4 with an Agfa A3 flatbed-scanner. Hm, sounds like this computer would well fit into a photographers studio... At that time I also mentioned that the seller was from Gent, Belgium and I knew that Carl De Keyzer runs his studio there... And the e-bay username of the seller was "kecmagnum"... I once read a book written by David Hurn and Bill Jay called "On being a photographer". David Hurn mentioned in his book that the photographers code of Magnum starts with the first two letters of the photographers last name followed by the first letter of his first name. I was not sure but everything pointed towards Carl De Keyzer himself as the seller of this book on e-bay. After I won the auction I send an e-mail to the seller asking where he got this signed and new example from. And guess what. I received an e-mail from Carl De Keyzer five minutes later telling me that it was not hard to sign your own books if being the author.

Anyway, I was honored to get him a coffee from this very good and cheap (relativly cheap for Manhatten) Cuban restaurant on the other side of the street. Nice to meet him in person since I like his work a lot. You may want to view his incredible website here or pictures of the book I bought at the auction here. I can also recommend reading David Hurns book "On being a photographer" which I found rather interesting. This book can be found here.

I left work at about 6.30pm and headed up north to the International Center of Photography which is about 20 blocks away from work to get a schedule of workshops they offer. Wow, they've got such a well sorted book store there! Since I was near Times Square then I walked over to take some pictures. I ended up taking photographies of tourists who took their pictures in Times Square. That was not too serious but good fun anyway! Photos to be posted later.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 01:00 AM | Comments (6)

Star Wars Episode III premiere in NYC for my girlfriend?

My girlfriend Karin will come to visit me in New York on May 15th. She called me yesterday to tell me - full of excitment - that she just noticed "Star Wars Episode III" will be in cinemas from on May 19th... Well to be honest I am no fan of Star Wars, never realy watched it. However my girlfriend is a bif Star Wars fan and she asked me to find a cool cinema in New York to watch it.

My questions to all New Yorkers: Would anybody point out a good cinema in the NYC area to me? Karin would like to see the movie in a cinema to which people come dressed up as some Star Wars characters for the premiere. Real Star Wars freaks... Does someone know if such an event will take place? Thanks in advance!

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 03:21 PM | Comments (7)

Getting up and out of the subway

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 10:50 PM | Comments (5)

New York Subway Photos

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:15 PM | Comments (3)

First two working days at Magnum Photos

My first two days at Magnum went realy well. Got introduced to the staff members, met all the interns (which by the way are quite a lot), got familiar with the office space and set up my place for work.
We originaly intended to work on a desk in the middle of the archives as previously mentioned. Since this space will be needed for someone else and the "In Motion" department wanted to stay together for better communication we set up a new desk in the main office space.
Great place to be since we will be working in the middle of the place where everything comes together. And my view is directly lead to a wonderful color print of Alex Webb and a black and white print from Bruce Gilden among others. You can actually see this one print of Bruce Gilden here.
I am very much looking forward to my stay at Magnum Photos. Everyone seems to be realy friendly and the best of all: Everyone seems to realy have a deep passion for photography. Magnums office is such an inspirational place to be surrounded by good spirits, great people and photographies whether hanging on the walls, stored in the archive or displayed in books.

Too dark photos on this Photoblog

I'd also like to mention something regarding my own photographies displayed on this Photoblog: I got some notes that the pictures here are much to dark. I looked at this site on a screen at the Magnum office today and they've been displayed as kind of a black soup. Of course this is not my intention since they look completely different on my screen. Of course there are wide differences in the way photographies are displayed on different screens but these differences are way to big. I will have to locate the problem and figure out how to do a workaround.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:47 PM | Comments (9)

Mayday rally and march on Union Square

I originaly wanted to attend the Mayday Festival in Tomkins Square Park on the Eastside. When I got out of the train on Union Square I saw a whole bunch of people with transparents standing around waiting for the Mayday marchers to come.

Speakers included labor leaders, community organizers, immigrant workers, international solidarity activists, youth, veterans and military resisters.

After speeches ended heated discussions started with a small group of counter-demonstrators who called themselfes the "Protest Warriors". They want to "fight the left, doing it right" as stated on their website.

More photos and text in the extended entry.

Continue reading "Mayday rally and march on Union Square"

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:46 PM | Comments (3)

Joe the man who's picture was taken a thousand times

I met Joe today on Union Sqaure while taking pictures of the Mayday parade and protest march. After photographing a transparent lying on the ground just a few feet away from him he waved me to come over and just said: "You took my picture". I sat down on the ground next to him and told him that I was just taking a photo of that sign over there. He didn't realy believe me. One of the good things of shooting digital is that you have the possibility to show people the pictures you took on that little screen. I convinced him of the fact that I didn't take his picture and offert him a cigarette.

We where smoking this cigarett together and started to talk. He told me that everybody want's to take pictures of him. He has been photographed a thousend times already. People from the press took pictures of him, people who did books took pictures of him and tourists took pictures of him. Joe told me that he'd like to get some money if people use his photos to earn money theirselfs. Two lesbian women invited him once to their appartment in the East Village to take nude photos of him. He told me that he has no problem standing in the middle of the street getting naked and being photographed. He just didn't want to do that since he didn't want to get into troubles with the police.

We have been sitting on Union Square for about an hour and a half talking about our lifes. Joe worked in a Pizza restaurant originaly. He lost his job when they went bankrupt and was unable to find a new one. Joe told me about his wife and his father who died 10 years ago, we where talking about life on the street and about the opportunities homeless people have in New York to get a place to sleep and some food. Seems there are not many of them.

Suddenly he moved sidewards and pulled a sheet of paper out of his trousers, unfolded it and said: "Look this guy did also take my photo". Well there was Bruce Davidson's name written down. I told Joe that Bruce Davidson was a very famous photographer from the Magnum Photos agency and that he realy did a well known book about New Yorks subways. Joe never saw this book and he didn't meet Bruce Davidson. A Japanese girl once gave him this note and told him that he was in there. No matter if he is or not, he seemed happy to know that a famous photographer took a picture of him. He asked me if I would also take some photos of him, a thousand if I wanted to. I took a few frames and told him that I will get them printed for him. I might find Joe around Union Square. I should just give it a try...

I have to go to bed now, tomorrow will be my first day at Magnum. If you'd like to see some work of Bruce Davidson, the photographer mentioned above, visit his website here.
I'll be posting photos of the Mayday parade and protest march tomorrow.

Posted by Martin Fuchs at 11:18 PM | Comments (10)