I found while browsing CDVs on Ebay another Brady CDV with yet another studio address in Washington DC. It was the one I’d been looking for for ages. I had heard a rumor that the studio, which you can still see from the outside of the building, was Brady’s, and I’d heard it was Alexander Gardner’s. But now, I can definitively say you can still see Mathew Brady’s Washington DC studio that was located at 625 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest. Today the building is occupied by the National Council of Negro Women, but if you go around back into the alley, you can still see the north light slanted studio window on the top two floors of the building. From what I’ve been told, the room is now storage space for the association, and there’s not much to see. But it’s really cool that this piece of photographic history still exists, and aside from the paint color, you can get a feel for the streetscape in the day when it was a working studio.
Category Archives: Washington DC
At the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair
Ag fairs are a long-running tradition in the United States. They’re getting harder to find now, especially near urban areas on the coasts, as agricultural regions disappear. And really, there’s not that much agricultural to the Montgomery County Fair these days – it’s mostly just the midway with the rides and games and heart-stoppingly unhealthy food. It had been ages since I went to one, so it was a nice trip down nostalgia lane, and they make for a great opportunity to shoot wild colors at night. The Montgomery County Fair is held in Gaithersburg every summer, and while the area used to be semi-rural, it is now very much a part of the Washington DC megalopolis. It’s not an exurb or even an outer suburb anymore.
I’d have included the Super Shot dropping but it happens so fast it’s hard to time it and get a good picture with motion blur that makes sense – setting up a tripod in the middle of the midway to take that shot would probably get you ejected by security for obstructing traffic.
I shot all of these hand-held, with my Contax RTS III and 50mm f1.4 lens. most were shot at f1.4. My film of choice is Kodak Portra 160, not only because it’s very fine-grained but also because it has a remarkable talent for handling mixed lighting conditions.
Another Alexander Gardner image
Here’s another CDV from the Alexander Gardner studio. It’s a card-size copy of an architectural rendering of St. Paul’s Church here in Washington DC. The Architect is Emlen T. Littell, 111 Broadway, New York. I’ve done a little digging and can’t find a current St. Paul’s church that looks like this – there are a number of St. Paul’s churches in the DC area, but the ones I could find in the most probable parts of town for the time period don’t look anything like this, nor do they mention the architect – and several of them do mention the architect who designed their building.
Emlen Littell was a prominent ecclesiastical architect in the 2nd half of the 19th century, working mostly in New York and Philadelphia. He became president of the American Institute of Architects. One of his most famous designs is the Church of the Incarnation in New York City, which had many famous parishioners including Admiral David Farragut and Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR’s mother’s funeral was held there as well. It has windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany among other well-known Victorian artists.
Something totally random
Here I was, just minding my own business doing a little shopping for me and the cats, when what do I see but the retired general and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, signing copies of his new book.
DC Gay Pride Parade 2012 – ‘Faces of Pride’ Part 5
Remember what I said earlier about issues? Here’s another example of how issues have shifted – instead of HIV/AIDS, now we have PETA pushing to spay/neuter our pets. Again, an important issue – both of my cats are neutered. But “Condoms don’t work- spay your cat” doesn’t have quite the same impact as “Silence=Death”. Again, not that I’m wishing to go back to 1993 when people literally did drop like flies. Progress is a wonderful thing. The nostalgia is more for the sense of shared community that came with having an enemy to fight. We were all brothers then. Now we’ve got Thai restaurants and PETA selling us pad thai and feline gender reassignment surgery. At least the salespeople are cute 😀
DC Gay Pride Parade 2012 – ‘Faces of Pride’ Part 4
Truly the gamut of images of Pride. I was most struck by the young Latino boy marching with ‘Mpoderate! (Empower Yourself!) a gay Latino/a youth group. Talk about an at-risk population – kids who are aliens in their culture in so many ways- coming from a foreign country and/or a home where English is a distant second language, a culture where male/female roles are rigidly defined and deviation is met with anything from disapproval to violence, and a range of religions that fervently discourage homosexuality, and it’s a wonder that many of them make it to their 18th birthday without criminal records, HIV infection, or getting hurt/killed. This is NOT to generalize that the Latino community is monolithically oppressive or that there are no happy healthy well-adjusted gay Latinos in the US. But the kids who use the services of ‘Mpoderate! are the ones who are facing all those kinds of oppressions. If you’re interested in finding out more about ‘Mpoderate and how you can support their services, you can check out the website for La Clinica Del Pueblo – they’re the parent organization.
DC Gay Pride Parade 2012 – ‘Faces of Pride’ Part 3
I’ve been attending Pride parades and festivals for over 20 years now. Every year is different, in every city. One thing I’ve noticed as a sea change from the early days is the switch in emphasis from AIDS/HIV (not that it has gone away, but it is now very much in the background, which is not necessarily a good thing) to gay families – the most wildly cheered groups are PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays) and the gay parenting groups. There are as always the nearly naked dancing boys with the Supersoakers, the gay bars and the leather/sm/fetish clubs, along with drag queens galore. It is fascinating to see how the movement has changed as time has gone on… now that our basic civil rights are reasonably secure and the political focus has shifted from mere survival to guaranteeing the right to thrive. There’s a certain absence of frisson, rebellious tension and erotic possibility in the air that used to be there, and I’m not sure if it is because I’ve grown up or because the movement has.
DC Gay Pride Parade 2012 – ‘Faces of Pride’ Part 2
I went to the Pride Parade yesterday here in Washington DC. It was a photo exercise as much as documentary outing because I limited myself to shooting the entire thing with my Canon 5D and 135mm F2 L lens. I was aiming for portraits of the people populating the event. I’m going to batch them in sets of ten give or take so I don’t overload anyone visually, or completely choke their bandwidth. And as always, the appearance of anyone in these photos is not to be taken as indicative of their sexuality or gender identity, one way or another. Gosh, I can’t wait for the day that disclaimer is absolutely unnecessary.
DC Gay Pride Parade 2012 – ‘Faces of Pride’
I went to the Pride Parade yesterday here in Washington DC. It was a photo exercise as much as documentary outing because I limited myself to shooting the entire thing with my Canon 5D and 135mm F2 L lens. I was aiming for portraits of the people populating the event. I’m going to batch them in sets of ten give or take so I don’t overload anyone visually, or completely choke their bandwidth. And as always, the appearance of anyone in these photos is not to be taken as indicative of their sexuality or gender identity, one way or another. Gosh, I can’t wait for the day that disclaimer is absolutely unnecessary.
Installation at Artomatic in Progress
Here’s my exhibit, in progress of being mounted.
dcphotoartist 