“Egret was a particularly lucky discovery. I was trying to find a good vantage point to photograph the canal from when I came across this beautiful white egret perched in a tree overlooking the water. I shoot on film cameras with long exposures, so trying to get a shot of a panicky bird before it flew off seemed hopeless, but somehow one frame came out sharp. Even better, after developing the film I realized the Lowe’s sign was peeking out in the background, which added an even more bizarre punchline to the image. I think this photo sums up everything I see and feel in the series: beauty, sadness, humor, wonder, paradox.” #

“Green Canal was one of the earliest photos I shot in the series. It’s from the third street bridge looking towards downtown Brooklyn. I love the dark tones and moody vibe of this one; it makes me think of some medieval Dutch landscape or a Caspar David Friedrich painting. The city recedes and there’s this sense of entering a hypnotic space of natural awe and wonder for me.” #

“Tree Shadow: I like the idea of projected nature here, fixed in time by artificial means. One of the interesting things about shooting at night is the light never really changes. All the light sources are fixed and constant; nothing is moving like the sun or changing much in light quality. So if you need to go back and reshoot a picture, there is no magic hour to miss, no chasing of shadows or waiting for clouds to pass. Just eight or more hours of continual, unforgiving glare.” #

“Blossoms: I realized at one point during my shooting that I wanted to capture all the seasons in Gowanus for the series. Spring is the most difficult, as the blossoms only last a few weeks, and if there’s a big windstorm or lots of rain it could be even shorter. So I methodically found and photographed every flowering tree in the neighborhood while I could. Here I was drawn to the way the swaying blossoms mirrored the swirls of graffiti.” #

“Winter Tug: This is in the parking lot of Lowe’s, overlooking the canal. I do not know the back story of this little park, but it strikes me as another absurd overlap in Gowanus. If you squint looking at the left half it could almost be a scene reminiscent of Paris, with the faux-iron gaslights, benches, and wandering path. But then the park looks out over a less-than-bucolic scene of barges, tugs, a scrap metal yard, and an oil terminal. The stench here is often enough to make you gag, sweet cloying petroleum fumes mixed with the sickening stench of raw sewage.” #

“Moon Dock: This is the old launching dock for the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club and many others who accessed the canal. It’s currently blocked off and undergoing reconstruction as part of the new condo development. I really miss this dead end; it had a magical, intimate quality to it. Being able to go right up to the water, you could almost fantasize about climbing down the ladder like it was a community pool—but of course that would be unthinkable given the state of the canal. Here I captured it with a particularly long two minute exposure and a full moon reflecting off its glistening surface.” #

“Reflection: this is one of my favorite vantage points in Gowanus, which is somewhat hidden at the dead end of a barren industrial street. When it’s humid and the mists rise off the canal, the light here is incredible, with the floods from this big cement plant filling up the atmosphere. It feels so otherworldly and there is a strange peace to it. I feel like I could stand there for hours taking it in.” #

“Sunflower: I biked by this sunflower growing in the construction barriers where Whole Foods was being built and did a double take. I couldn’t believe this beautiful sunflower could thrive in such unlikely circumstances. I like how the bits of trash are almost like compost, being dissolved and eaten up by this unstoppable plant.” #

“Pilot House is a building that almost everyone from the neighborhood recognizes. This is the old Coignet Building, which was the headquarters and model home for a now-defunct French company that made a special type of cement that imitated stone. It can’t be torn down due to its landmark status, so Whole Foods had to build around it and, in fact, agree to fix it up as part of their deal to acquire the land. For years, though, it sat on this lonely stretch of Third Avenue, which felt like a total wasteland just a few years ago when I took this shot after a huge blizzard. I like that this strange relic of the past will hopefully be forever embedded in a clashing modern envelope surrounding it.” #

“Fluorescent Tree: You could walk by this view every day and not notice it; it’s very nondescript in real life. But when you throw just the right frame around it to block out the clutter it becomes something else. To me it looks like the tree and vines are attempting to mount an escape over a stockade fence.” #

“Sailboat is a great example of just how much Gowanus has changed in the last two years. This was shot in 2013, but almost every element of the picture has now been altered. Whole Foods’s parking lot is now on the left side of the frame, complete with windmills and promenade. The iconic concrete silos in the background have been torn down and a new, controversial parole center built in their place. Finally, the sailboat has been moved to a new location because of all the new construction. The owner came to a show of mine and exclaimed, ‘Hey, that’s my boat!’ and we went on to become friends. I love that through this project I’ve met many great people and developed a real connection to my local community.” #

“Red Vines was on the side of a building that was being demolished to make way for a new condo complex. I took a shot of it towards the end of summer, when the vines were green, and thought it was interesting. But then a few weeks later I went by in the fall and the vines had changed to this fiery red and I knew that was the shot. I’ve always thought of it as some strange cryptic message from the future. It reminds me of something survivors in a post-apocalyptic world would stumble across, wondering what meaning was encoded in a past now doomed and indecipherable.” #

“Hanging Garden: I think there is definitely an underlying vein of humor in the series. Here we have this sad little plant hanging all by itself with this unholy light beating down on it. The punchline is, if you look closely at the plastic bag on the pavement, it has a big biohazard symbol on it. I’d say that neatly sums up Gowanus.” #

“One of the things that struck me in shooting this series was going back to the same places again and again and seeing how they changed over time. This dead end in particular always held some new surprise. People use it as a dumping ground, so on any given night it could have smashed cans of paint, heaps of metal and boards, or crushed suitcases spewing twisted clothes everywhere. The tree itself looks like some choking hybrid of several different plants trying to outmaneuver each other unsuccessfully. The blossoms add this peace and tranquility, but then with the big asterisk of a fluttering plastic bag, a parody of a flower.” #