📷: Eric B & Rakim, NYC (1987) ©Janette Beckman In 1982, British photographer Janette Beckman landed in New York with plans to spend Christmas with a friend but was quickly entranced by the city’s singular mix of creativity, rebellion, and decadence. After a decade of “benign neglect” promulgated by the Nixon White House, New York […]
📷: @nycgraff.head 70. That’s how many New York City subway cars were hit last week, establishing a new record high and milestone in the number of incidents the MTA normally deals with over 7 days time. First reported by @RespectTheArchitects, the “historical feat” consisted of several wholetrains getting covered from top to bottom. (For the […]
Mike Maldonado, Iowa, 1998; from Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed (Aperture, 2023). © 2023 Ed Templeton The year was 1990 and SoCal skater Ed Templeton went pro, ushering in a new era of sport, art, and business that could only emerge from the underground. Just 18 years old, Templeton stood at the vanguard, winning the first […]
Police tracking down a high profile murder suspect by collecting DNA from a piece of half-eaten pizza crust in a pizza box that was discarded into a public trash can on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, is one of the craziest (and most New York) details to emerge out of the highly publicized arrest of Rex […]
All photos © Eddie Otchere Back in 1994, word on the street was out: Wu-Tang Clan had landed in London for a concert at the Kentish Town Forum. Deeply immersed in the city’s underground music scene, Vauxhall native Eddie Otchere knew his moment had arrived. Then 20, the young photographer made a few calls and […]
Barreto’s on Stanton Street (1987) | 📷: Tria Giovan On May 28, 1984, New York Magazine announced the death knell of the Lower East Side (LES) with a cover story declaiming the arrival of gentrification. “There Goes the Neighborhood,” the weekly warned, above a photograph of white hipsters in front of a graffiti-covered wall that’s […]
“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived […]
Mexico City, Mexico – From the outside, La Posada del Sol doesn’t look like much, just another grouping of dilapidated, graffiti-covered buildings with boarded-up windows. Widely known amongst urban explorers, the location is notoriously hard to access: Round-the-clock security and green steel gates adorned with barb wire makes entry nearly impossible, unless you’re resourceful. I […]
(Jamel Shabazz: Albums | Steidl/The Gordon Parks Foundation) As a young boy growing up in Red Hook during the 1960s, photographer Jamel Shabazz lived in a mythic city that has long since disappeared but for the people, photographs, and stories that preserve a bygone era. His family lived in one of the newest Brooklyn housing […]
NYC subway surfers 📷: @legalizedfraud That’s the question that elected officials and many others are asking after the recent death of yet another 15-year-old “subway surfer” in New York City. According to police, teenager Zackery Noel Nazario hit his head on something, presumably a beam, and fell beneath a Manhattan-bound J train as it crossed […]