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It’s golden hour—that 45 minutes or so during dusk where everything in Brooklyn is gilded, despite the gray of winter. The couple on the top floor has gathered their kids to light the menorah. For the past few years, they’ve lit the candles a few hours early while they FaceTime with family in Paris, where darkness has already fallen. As the kids clamor to see their cousins on the little screen, I wonder if they’ll ever realize how special these moments are—how their parents are working so hard to transcend space and time to maintain the family’s connection.Two floors down, their neighbors will be lighting their candles soon too. Their son is young and goes to bed early—he’s already snuggled up on the couch with his dad, a little worn out from a busy day. He goes to the same school as the kids on the third floor and they often play together. I often see them running through Prospect Park, shrieking with glee.Sometimes I wonder if my grandson would get along with them. I think they’re all in first grade.
My photographs put a frame around the most sacred moments of everyday life, which to me always happen in the home. For that reason and more, I love to photograph holidays. This was a year when the families in this building were celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah on the same night. In the upper right window, someone is rehearsing to perform in a Christmas concert. Below, a family is preparing for their big holiday dinner, decorating their Christmas tree. And below them, a woman is alone, lighting the Hanukkah candles. The Hanukkiah was handmade by one of her kids when they were little. Even though they’ve all grown up and moved out of the house by now, she still uses it, year after year.
They’ve lived there about eighteen years. It's like a castle - and in the beginning it was so empty. Back then, they’d just had their first daughter. Now, she sits on the other end of the couch, studying for her college exams. Time collapses on itself.My god, when she and her husband bought it - it wasn’t even a fixer upper, it was totally falling apart. But that’s the beauty of an old New York relic - this one built by Chiclet, the gum tycoon - it had so much potential. Two years of renovations meant she spent many afternoons bundled up in a sweater staring at stark white walls. Her water broke as her husband was dragging a new couch into the living room, and he left it sitting there lopsided as they rushed out. Two years later, they had a son, and finally, once the renovation was finished, a bedroom he could call his very own. When their next daughters arrived, they got an entire floor to themselves, their own world within the castle.
Over the years, she’s covered the walls with photos. In the long hallways that once haunted her with their vastness, she sees the faces of her kids, then hears their stomping and laughing from the floor above. The house never looks empty now and she never looks cold.
The way I decided to photograph this home is so circuitous that it’s funny. Years ago, I was at Equinox Gym sitting in the steam room and got to chatting with the other person sitting across from me. She happened to be Julie Saul, one of the greatest photo gallerists at the time. We knew each other a bit from the photo world, and she asked what I was up to. I said I was trying to put together a shoot in Amsterdam.She said “I could make that happen!” She introduced me to her best friend’s daughter who was working on PR for a very cool company called Aqua Spark in Holland. The daughter then introduced me to the founders of Aqua Spark Amy Novogratz and Mike Vellings. Upon hearing about my project, Amy and Mike immediately invited me to Holland. They hosted parties for me, introduced me to the neighbors and helped produce the photoshoots. We had a great time! When I got home Amy introduced me to her brother, Mike, who lived in a famous building in Brooklyn.
A: You know the phrase “it takes a village”?
B: Doesn’t everyone?
A: I guess—That’s just what that building reminds me of. It’s more commune than apartment. I feel like that’s what living in a city was supposed to be—taking advantage of our proximity to our friends and neighbors instead of the sort of “alone in a crowd” thing so many New Yorkers have going on.
B: Us included.
A: Right. The folks across the street are moving tomorrow. It’s gonna be a pretty big change for them—they’re going from that huge building to their own brownstone.
B: God, I’d love to have my own brownstone.
A: No, same, but I wonder if it’ll be weird or hard for the kids—they’re so used to having a whole community right there. I literally see them sticking their heads out the window and shouting at their friends to come shoot hoops in their living room or whatever. B: Said hoop is the last thing to be packed it seems.
A: Oh yeah, they love that thing.
B: I hope they will have room for it in their new place.
A: Oh, I spoke to the mom the other day. The kids are getting their own floor in their new place.
B: I would have murdered for any sort of privacy from my parents at that age. I had to leave the apartment to get away from them. I think our apartment was a two bedroom in real estate lingo only. My room was a glorified closet.
A: The curse of being a city kid. But then on the other hand, when you do have to leave the house to get away from your family, there’s no shortage of stuff to do.
B: True enough. I mean they—and you—have the Brooklyn Museum right in their freaking backyard.
A: Until tomorrow at least, for them, I mean.
B: Do you think they even care? I don’t think I gave a shit about art or museums when I was that age.
A: Oh, no, me neither. I love it now though. It’s pretty wild to just casually live down the street from a cultural institution.
B: You’re extremely lucky.
A: Ah, I know. But I also feel like it’s not that rare in New York. There are so many museums and famous restaurants or historical spots all over the place. You can’t walk down the street without, like, tripping over something important.
B: Yeah, they may not appreciate it now, but they will when they’re older.
A: For sure, that’s the blessing of being a city adult.
This is the last night that the family in the photograph lived here in Prospect Heights, in Turner Towers, a classic Art Deco-style, pre-war building with nearly 200 apartments. One was the childhood home of the late comedienne Joan Rivers. The neighbors are extremely close and barely close their shades so the kids can yell across and invite each other over for a game of basketball.
The family moved from here to a brownstone in Bushwick. I wonder if the kids prefer a brownstone where they now have their own floor, separate from their parents and a magnificent clawfoot bathtub. Do they ever miss the smaller apartment where they were friends with the kids across the window space?The grand museum filled with visitors from around the world peeks out from behind. The imposing building is filled with art that can transport you to the farthest corners of the earth, and sits in complete contrast to this cozy family space that invites you to be completely present. This is New York, people living their day to day lives while being watched over by imposing monuments.
Is it just me or is New York particularly filled with people who look like their pets? This cat’s always-chill-vibe plus its fluffy white coat gives me the impression of someone perpetually at a day spa. The woman, in her own fluffy white robe, matches in both outfit and attitude, tonight at least. I often see her and her husband working hard; I think they both work from home, which seems impossible to manage in a Brooklyn-sized apartment—two people living and working in, (what I assume is) a one bedroom, but I guess they’ve got it figured out. They manage to keep their space clean too, trim, minimal. The cat even seems to match their general aesthetic. I find myself thinking about the cat more than I do the people. Does she have space to run around in that tiny glass box? Does she have places to climb and toys scattered around despite the neatness? Does she scratch up their lovely modern furniture which, from here, looks so pristine? She certainly seems well-loved and is never wanting for attention. Oh, to be a cat in a good home!
The couple in the window are architects. They spend their professional lives designing these huge luxury apartments—preoccupied with interiors. It’s interesting that, in their domestic life, they’ve chosen a home, the crowning glory of which is the view out the window, what’s on the other side of the glass. They are right on top of the East River with a panorama of the skyline and so many of its iconic buildings. I wonder if any of the buildings that they can see are ones that they worked on at some point. Do they look across the water and remember how they opened up the wall between the kitchen and dining room in the apartment on Park Ave? Do they regret not making the two bedroom in Murray Hill into a three bedroom? Did they work on the exterior of any of those thousands of buildings? Even if they didn’t, I imagine it’s inspirational for them to look out on so many architectural feats. Or maybe they’ve chosen a simple building with a clean interior and minimalist decor because they want a break from design. They want their apartment to feel easy, decision-less. They barely have art on their walls—not that they need it with the art out their windows, nor do they really have room with so much glass. Maybe they want a distinction between their worlds—work on one side of the glass and ease on the other.
Brooklyn sprawls east, across the river from Manhattan. So many people live there that if it were a city on its own it would be the fourth largest in the United States. Roam its neighborhoods and you will encounter old brownstones, charming row houses, elegant apartment buildings and residential homes shaded by leafy green trees—and, in the borough’s commercial downtown, a skyline that seems to grow taller with each passing glance, as though the buildings are chasing Manhattan’s famous towers.
My grandmother grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called East New York. Her grandmother before her was a peddler who sold produce from a pushcart, and used an abacus to make change. Built by a mix of Italian, German, Irish, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, today Brooklyn is still known for its ever-changing ethnic and racial makeup—both as it has to do with gentrification in some neighborhoods and growing immigrant enclaves in others. For me, that means photographing in Brooklyn is always an adventure, filled with surprising stories. In Fort Greene, I photographed a fascinating building (Hanukkah Photo) owned by a Jewish woman from New Jersey and a Muslim man from Sierra Leone who turned it into Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing. In the upscale Park Slope neighborhood, one connection after another led me to meet the owners of the “Chiclet Mansion,” a famous Gilded Age building considered by many to be the finest example of Romanesque revival architecture in the five boroughs. Constructed in 1890 and eventually divided into 11 separate apartments, the mansion has since been renovated by its current owners into a light-filled jewel box of a single family home once more.
Brooklyn is iconic because its famous histories are reflected in juxtapositions of people, landscape, and architecture: Williamsburg with its hipsters and Hasidic Jews, the Brighton Beach seaside with its enclaves of migrants speaking Russian, Eastern Parkway with its Art Deco residential buildings abutting historic landmarks, gardens, and greenspaces. To understand the borough is to understand the meaning of a melting pot, but one that is constantly evolving. Blink and Brooklyn may have already reinvented itself once more.
