Back in the day when us city-kids were in need of some fun, we’d “pull” a false alarm on the fire call boxes. I admit that I may have been the culprit on one or two false alarms in my lifetime, but that’s it! Scout’s honor (though I’ve never been a Scout). In the age of cell phones and wifi calling, they’re becoming relics like public telephones & telephone booths.
Broken Streets began with this photograph from 2002. I didn’t start off thinking it would be a visual story. That idea wouldn’t come to mind until 2011 when I began seeing and photographing the many call boxes I came across that were broken.
The morning after Hurricane Irene had hit New York City, I walked around my neighborhood to see the damages. Nine years after the first photograph, Broken Streets became a reality whether I claimed it to be one or not. The three photographs above reflect the origins of the story. The organic relationship became apparent after I saw the connections and similarities in the photographs taken years apart.
Streets are so broken, we sometime can’t identify what it is that needs fixing. Would you know what that is in the above photograph without reading about it here?
These two made me think… hmmmmm? Transformed into sculpture maybe?
Coney Island was pretty devastated from the effects of Superstorm Sandy. This man-made (I presume) sand dune—in the middle of the street was about twelve feet high and stretched the length of the city block.
View from atop the sand dune looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island in the middle ground. The street and sidewalk pavements are underneath the dune. It all washed ashore during the storm.
Believe them when they say that some things in the city are being held together with duct tape (or packing tape).
If the city doesn’t close off the internals of the call boxes, they often get transformed into trash cans as well as graffiti and art installations.
You may not have any thoughts about these call boxes as you pass by them. I have many. They were created for a reason, saving lives and property. There are anywhere from 11,000 to 16,000 in the city. How many of them don’t work? Don’t know! But, that’s a lot of energy, metals, and human work that went into making them. To possibly be relegated to obscurity and the garbage heap.
If you’ve been reading Living Life Photographically newsletters over the past few months, you’ll probably notice that most of the visual stories are long term, or open ended. They began with a single image that flourished into a series. Like clothing trends that recycle over time, we tend to come back to the same ideas in photography from time to time. If you’re observant when looking at photographs through time, you’ll begin to see patterns of style, subject matter, and place. These are all themes that can be used to build seemingly unrelated individual images into visual stories.
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As always, I appreciate you reading this newsletter through.
Til next time…
Kenneth