Steven Gilbert Photography

"One Scene, Many Seens." The comma effectively means but. That matters here!  

Here's the sign, rendered literally, which I chose for its ordinariness, so that, to the degree that any image of it manages to be extraordinary, it will contrast all the more with its source. This span between ordinary and extra-ordinary, I use generally to gauge a photograph's success. The more deeply within mere mimicry it originates, the more meaningful (or at least intriguing) is its escape. This conception of meaning in photography, I learned from Bill Jay, Negative/Positive: A Philosophy of Photography.       

The B, though still easy to read, is not undisturbed.

Just barely the B in Buca still. 

On to other letters.

The combined exposures sometimes make for an impression of movement.     

detail of the preceding

Crystallinity amidst churning. 

In the implied motion around the calm center, I see also emotion. 

The camera, aimed at the same spot as in the preceding image, just rotated less between exposures, but the resulting images differ significantly. Since other distinctive images might be made even of this one spot, this sign must be photographically rich. What about other scenes?    

After having made hundreds of photographs in a dozen trips to the scene over eighteen months, another purpose of the portfolio emerged in my mind, catalyzed by seeing again Berenice Abbott's "New York at Night"  (  http://www.afterimagegallery.com/abbottnightview.htm ). In light of this and other photographs by her that I have long admired, I came to see this portfolio as a re-take on New York City as interpreted by some photographers and painters from about 1920 to about 1950, drawing on Modernist traditions. My "original intent" had nothing to do with this result, at least not consciously.