An afternoon in Chinatown, New York. The markets at the heart of everything.
Fish, often alive, sold to expert old ladies. Half dead toads in buckets are bagged
by vendors and thrown to the back of the shop, crushing their limbs. The sun cuts
across everything. People pass in and out of the shadows.
Time is short. I have to meet my wife in three hours and I have resolved to play
chess against a hustler at Washington square for the last of the hours (I win the
game and am carried on excited legs for the rest of the day).
The strangest of the photographs is of pig carcasses carried down into a
basement. I had spotted to doorway before and amazed at the quality of shadow
and light had hoped the gods of photography would reward me with something
striking. As I swing hopefully by a third time I see a collection of Hispanic men
unloading a truck of pigs. I am ecstatic as they turn down into the basement (a
coming together of such unusual elements) and snap openly and wildly at them.
They are bemused but figure it's New York. The pig photograph presented is
probably the oddest I've taken, possibly the oddest I've seen anywhere.
Other favourites are the young girl playing at the shop door and the play-like
image of the three people in the street (the lady in a floral dress).
All but the pig photograph are shot from the hip. People do not know they are
being photographed.