Front Page of the NY TImes! Our film “Ellis Island” was published after 50 years.
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”
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”
Vampire Weekend – Footage in Their Music Videos
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.
Vampire Weekend
I found myself on a Metrocard in May that is promoting the band Vampire Weekend’s new album and tour. The photo was taken in the 1980s by my friend Steve Siegel while we were exploring a scrap yard in Bayonne, New Jersey, where graffiti-covered subway cars were lined up waiting to be scrapped.
Borodynka, Ukraine / Cyclorama Installation in Times Square
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
Irpin Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us
A 60-foot-long photograph of a civilian car cemetery in Ukraine
I recently visited Ukraine and I would love you to see the installation of one of several works I will be making from my visit. Please come on this Saturday to see the 60-foot-long photograph of the car cemetery in Irpin, full of the bullet and shrapnel-ridden cars destroyed as residences fled the city.
This is the first of two public art installations I’ve planned. The second will be a large walk-in cyclorama of a bombed apartment block in Borodyanka.
On March 6th 2022, Russians shelled the road that hundreds of civilians were using to escape the fighting in Irpin. Men, women and children were killed while fleeing in an attack that was called a likely war crime by the Human Rights Watch. Parts of the city were occupied by Russian forces until they were forced out at the end of that March. They left behind over 250 civilians dead, a quarter of the 62,000 residents homeless, and 70% of infrastructure damaged.
This is a vulnerable moment for Ukraine, with the stopgap spending bill set to expire on November 17th, and support for aid waning among Republicans in Congress.
This installation is up-close and visceral. It serves a witness to just some of the horror and destruction Ukraine has experienced, a memorial in life-sized detail. It was stitched together from over 30 high-resolution images and can be viewed in high resolution at: pwbuehler.prodibi.com/a/jvlqx2okwlexyzv
