Monthly Archives: June 2024

Front Page of the NY TImes! Our film “Ellis Island” was published after 50 years.

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This makes me feel old in a good way! 50 years later our 16mm film was just published by NY Time as part of their new “Encore” series on Op-Docs.

Steven Siegel and I made it when we were 17 year old high school students. What an adventure to row a small boat to the then-abandoned island and explore. We were members of the Young Filmmakers Foundation’s Film Club located on the Lower East Side, around the corner from where the New Museum is now located. A much different neighborhood then!

That same rowboat is now part of the exhibit of my photos of the islands of New York at Front Room Gallery in Hudson New York that will run through June 23rd.

Watch the film on the NY Times website with this free link.

Information on the show at Front Room Gallery here.

PBS State of the Arts “Return to Ellis Island”

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The PBS series “State of the Arts” produced a segment about Steve Siegel and my adventure rowing a small boat out to Ellis Island in 1974 to make a 16mm documentary film. We were 17 and still in high school when we made the film, and we returned in April, 50 years later, to reminisce.

View the State of the Arts program here.
View the original film on the NY Times Op-Docs website here.

Steve and my thanks to the producer of State of the Arts, Susan Wallner.

In the Guardian: “The inaccessible and abandoned islands of New York – in pictures”

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The Guardian published a gallery of the images in my solo photography exhibition at Front Room Gallery in Hudson, NY, titled “No Man Is an Island: Poetry in the Ruins of the New York Archipelago.” It runs through June 23.

More information on the exhibition here.
Link to the article here.

Vampire Weekend – Footage in Their Music Videos

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In the 70s and 80s my filmmaking partner Steve Siegel and I made a couple of films around New York City and some of it is appearing in their music videos and stage show. The opening shot to this music video was a time-lapse tracking shot through the abandoned rail yards of Jersey City that are now Liberty State Park.

Borodynka, Ukraine / Cyclorama Installation in Times Square

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For a rally in Times Square for the second anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, I installed a walk-in photograph, or cyclorama, of a bombed-out apartment block in Borodyanka, Ukraine.

Before dawn on March 6, 2022, Russian warplanes targeted this apartment block with 500-lb bombs. Forty civilians sheltering in basements were killed after sections collapsed on them. Much of the town was also left in ruins. 

The image was created from over 30 high-resolution images and can be viewed at resolution at: https://kuula.co/share/5J4fq