As a photographer, I like to focus my work on long form projects that deal with the social issues that plague the New York metro area. Coming from my place of employment, the printing plant of the New York Daily News, of which my father was an employee for over fifty years, I've always been fascinated by the imagery that came off the presses in the dead of night whether they were shot by staff or wire photographers.
Growing up, the 'News, as well as the Times and the Post if my father happen to run into the other delivery drivers that night, was always my gateway to the world beyond my apartment. It was through the 'News that my understanding of the potent power of imagery to help narrate a story came about.
My submission, Working Class New York, is a project meant to document the modern day shrunken state of the blue collar landscape in New York City. It's been seventy years since VJ Day in Times Square and with it has gone the strength and numbers of the union strong city. A city that once, according to Joshua Freeman's book with the same title, held more "manufacturing jobs than Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Boston put together". Today, according to a New York Daily News editorial, the city limits consist of only 90,000 manufacturing jobs with numerous still on the line. Sweet'N Low's recent decision to leave Brooklyn and Elmhurst Dairy's shuttering of their milk processing plant in Queens, last of it's kind within the borders of New York City, only helps to back up that assertion.
