(*Note, join me on Bluesky. I may actually try to post articles and things I come across there, in the vein of this column. Hopefully, it can turn into a Twitter where we learn from the first-time-around mistakes.)

 

When you feel pain, create.

Last week I shared a piece exploring my liberal bubble; both in my head and out. It’s lovely here, but it’s also as surreal as I imagine your area is. We make a lot of mistakes (see: Eric Adams).

This newsletter is a liberal bubble as well. But if you voted for Trump, hey, I’m glad to have you here. Stick with me. Please.

I’ll start with a little background. I can talk more fun stories in another piece, but I’ve been teaching photography since 2010, probably a couple thousand people, a thousand workshops or so. There were times when I was doing seven, three-hour private workshops week after week during peak seasons. Through turf toe, shoulder pain, umbrellas, February with pounds of clothes extra. Two-a-days, the same walk twice in a row, nearly every day.

(Ever since I limited the workshops to a measured amount, those pains all disappeared).

I am not tired of my main route thankfully. Things change enough both daily and yearly to keep it fresh: different clothes, people, vibes. You can watch the mood of a city, the ticks, the profound and minute changes.

I can usually time a tour pace to end within five minutes of three hours, no matter what obstacles tourists can bring. And I’ve been through some obstacles. On my route, I can feel it in my soul when you might have to pee. I can pull profoundly moving statements out of my ass over and over and over again, ha.

(The hardest parts of being a workshop guide are making sure people don’t get run over or punched, not getting in people’s photographs, and politely toning down those who are a bit too aggressive or weird. And of course the tiredness).

I feel profoundly grateful to be able to witness how new friends from around the world perceive and interact with NYC, and capture details and obviousness that I’m, quite simply, oblivious to. I’ve met countless who learned English by watching Friends and imagining themselves in the city. It’s both a real and perceived place; both a literal and figurative set.

Watching all types of things spread, virus-like. Suddenly everyone venturously asking about Harlem, and the next month worried about subway crime even though nothing has changed except the administration and New York Post’s slant.

City Hall District

At the peak of Instagram, it felt like eighty percent of people were staring at their phones at any moment while out. I don’t know what that number actually was, but it now feels about half of the peak. Have things changed similarly where you live?

The NYC-photo-workshop-taking-bubble is pretty liberal; even the fiscally conservative of the bunch. Travelers in spirit, enough money to travel with a nice camera, many talking about the comments their fearful family and friends would say about New York.

Outside Trump Tower.

One was a local liberal representative of a very conservative place, his family a local legacy of politicians. I’ve had people in finance, governance, law, Bernie Bros from Georgia, lots of doctors and dentists with Leicas. Australians and Canadians when the exchange rate is good and oil is strong. Many Japanese but only a few Chinese. A lot of divorced and widowed.

If you’re a workshop guide, you need to be able to teach the basics quickly, in a loud environment, on the fly. Teaching ISO to someone with weak English who just bought their first camera yesterday on the hottest day of the year with a third of a battery of power is a good start.

Reminding myself to mentally tone down my Manhattan-anxious speed of talk. Workshops are a moment to slow down, even on the chaotic days; it’s an exercise in that.

Fighting to recover some days, perhaps after someone forgets their memory card, so you take them across the street to Target to buy one and they stick it in the wrong way and break their camera. Whoops… I guess let’s keep going?

(BTW the Target store that you recently found out was designed by the recent Long Island serial killer, but you don’t tell that story because you don’t want to start the day on a downer.)

You catch a few lenses, learn the spots where people trip, and tell them that the UPS guy with the cowboy hat loves photographs but the slightly mohawked USPS guy will yell at you feverishly.

“I posed for a bunch of photos today!”

It’s important to learn both the history and current events of the area; to explain what they’re seeing and why it’s interesting. But more importantly, you need to listen, ask questions, pry. The most boring blocks are when these workshops often shine.

People feel free to talk about their life and creative spirit, and often what’s extinguishing the flames. Prod. Learn. Enjoy. When you’re walking with a bum shoulder and 30-degree weather with gusts, and your toddler kept you up at night throwing up, you repeat it in your head like a mantra, This is the highlight of their trip, of their year. You can make it the highlight. Even in the rain; especially in the rain. And the hardest days can be a highlight for you as well.

Only one time did a participant wear a MAGA hat. A family of six hired by the daughter and son-in-law, their older grandfather sporting the bright red hat, obvious from a block away. He walked quietly in the back. On the route, a Black man went out of his way to say hi to him.

Only once in my life have I seen Trump in the flesh (or in the hair actually, that’s not a joke). My route pops into the City Hall district briefly, which is sandwiched between SoHo and Chinatown. A movie-set neighborhood. But this wasn’t a movie.

Outside the NYC (& Law and Order) Supreme Court, during Trump’s first run in the primaries, after they found out he had skipped jury duty for nearly a decade (I mean… who hasn’t tried). Maybe a hundred reporters surrounded him walking down the steps, all I saw from a block away was his hair, lowering before disappearing into his limo. It was too far for a photo with a 50mm, but I wish I had tried.

Through the oft-political conversations during these workshops at the time, you could see the Facebook and Instagram effect clearly in others but not as much in yourself.

This summer, I walked frequently by the courthouse where he was indicted on falsifying business records by twelve New Yorkers. Maybe they were all just liberals, but a reminder that 30% of people in NYC voted for him this time around. Trump is our son, a brash talker from Queens, now banished.

I was surprised to see many Asians at the protests, I assume many mothers whose kids have been hurt by affirmative action, obviously a complex issue. I recall witnessing this attending a 50% Asian high school, now 71.2%, how much more difficult it was to get into Ivy League schools. I remember seeing a girl crying in the halls in 1999 because her grades weren’t good enough, yet she had over a 92 average; an astonishing report card. Some years I would have been happy with a 71.2% average, until they gave me Adderall. School sucked then, but I wish I could escape there now.

What are our assumptions? I like to bring that up near the beginning of the workshops, along with slowing down.

We expect concrete answers, especially in echo chambers. Reactionary, black and white, me versus you, often with the bots and Russians clocking into work, their midsections growing, drinking coffee and chatting about a sports event. Is it a traumatizing job, or is it mindless and boring?

In retrospect, it’s scary how fast everything changes. Take a breath. Cut down the coffee. Volunteer more. Log off but stay informed, figure out the right sources, the right people. Be mindful of the spaces that constantly make you angry. I’m saying this to myself by the way.

Continue to create. You know that spark of humanity you feel sometimes, like a jolt. It pops out anytime you visit the 5th floor of the MoMA, or when the universe is just right. Feel that spark; interact with that spark.

Pain is when we create the foundations for better times (for those who make it). When artists create and fight through pain, it ignites a spark. And sometimes a wildfire.

We live in interesting times; explore them.

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

—Toni Morrison

Outside Trump Tower.

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