Stephen Mallon in MARE

HIER IST ENDSTATION by Martina Wimmer
German to English translation provided by Google

For almost forty years they were a part of the traffic arteries of New York duration of movement. Now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the old subway cars are laid to rest - as artificial reefs for marine life.

Down there, where they lie, it's quiet and cool. No one who lives there knows their names: R26, R28, R29, R32, R33, R36. More than 2500 cars of the decommissioned New York subway are laid on the seabed to eternal rest, on the east coast along the American continent, from Delaware, and New Jersey, down to North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. Gutted and windowless they fall down, the hardest workers in the mobile world to the new base, where they are now for ever to serve another population.

Depending on the type, the car is 50 to 65 feet long, three meters wide and 3.70 meters high, they are "luxury apartments for fish", as Jeff Tinsman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency in Delaware, has all contrived to say. A "Win- win situation, "wrote the" New York Times "in May 2011 on the unusual measure. The old cars are now artificial reefs that contain asbestos, which is difficult to dispose of land, but in the water, the state Environmental Protection Agency , harmless. The subway operator is therefore a much cheaper option, the getting rid of a good 40-year-old scrap. And the sea creatures take shelter and benevolent Tern mussels form and need solid ground to flourish. Since 2001 the project has run, to date there has been a 400-fold increase in biomass says Tinsman.

Myths are made of steel to the larder of the fish. When the R32 on 9 September 1964 pulled in for the first time in the Grand Central Station, a 20-member band played in uniform. The series was the first, the outer skin of stainless steel was a classic, fluted horizontally, bright silver, which they called the New York "Bright Liner".

The front car of the former couple's maiden voyage is at the New York Museum of Transportation, two others at an airport in Brooklyn, police forces use it in order to practice terror threats in the subway. A few hundred of them are lying in the sea. Others cars down there wear another part of the history of the city, they had decades of service, as the name attribute. "World's Fair" called a few cars from the series 36 constructed from 1963 to 1964 by the St. Louis Car Company, to go to on line 7 people to the World's Fair Flushing Meadows in Queens, where a progressive faith-and future-happy America 51 millions of visitors with the slogan "Peace Through Understanding", presented a few months before the war in Vietnam escalated.

About 1000 cars on the ocean floor shine in vermilion, the "Redbirds", named after the graffiti-resistant paint, which they have been applied in the early 1980s - the beginning of the end of an era in which in the city their wild anarchy not only on subway cars acting out.

New York's subway network is the longest in North America and one of the largest and oldest in the world. More than 6400 wagons are in use every day, 1.6 billion passengers were transported in 2010. Once you've been in this city, the subway trip will send you home with memories, the smell, the Gerappel, the squeaking and screeching of the brakes when she enters one of the 468 stations. The noise they caused it lies above the recommended by the World Health Organization limits, but who has traveled to New York City to be healthy?

Rather, because of the pictures of the many films that tell the city's story. Hardly anyone gets away without the subway as a performer from - with Gene Hackman that mimics a bull in "French Connection" drug dealer on the train, alongside John Travolta also known as Tony Manero, the bringing in "Saturday Night Fever," a night journey to reason , next to King Kong, who angrily throws with cars around, or next to the "Warriors" on their odyssey through the city. "The Taking of Pelham 123", the classic of all NYC subway films, in which Walter Matthau in a hostage raid free subway passengers in nerve-sapping 104 minutes has been remade two years ago, this time with a terrorist goes Travolta, Denzel Washington plays the savior. The city, knowing the power of pictures, maintains a separate department to meet the requests and desires of the film and TV productions.

Who wants the old moans and groans of the "Bright Liners" on location experience, has a few years time. Abut 200 of them remain in use until 2017, except for the C-line of Washington Heights, Brooklyn. If they are sunk in the sea also, then they would be for a second time, the last of their kind. The program was halted in 2010, due to lack of suitable materials. Younger coaches who were driven to the sideline, are processed with too much plastic, which makes removal of the interior too expensive.
Next, they say, off the east coast, a decommissioned U.S. Navy destroyer will be sunk.

Check out the article at Mare Online

Interview on Rob Galbraith Photography Insights

Feature: Stephen Mallon shoots a bridge's journey
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 | by Eamon Hickey

Industrious: Photographer Stephen Mallon (Photo by Doug Menuez)

After more than 100 years of supporting, literally, every imaginable walk of New York City life, the Willis Avenue Bridge was ready for retirement.

For nearly all of the 20th century, it had stretched more than 200 ft/60m across the Harlem River, carrying over 70,000 vehicles a day (and runners in the New York City Marathon) between Manhattan and the Bronx.

But by the summer of last year, a new bridge had been built to replace it. Made of steel, the new structure—the section that actually spans the river, to be precise—is about 350 ft/105m long, 65 ft/20m high, and 77 ft/23.5m wide. It weighs nearly 5 million pounds (2.3 million kilograms).

There was one catch—the new bridge wasn't anywhere near the Harlem River. It had been pre-fabricated in a huge construction yard near Albany, New York and would have to be transported more than 100 miles to get where it was meant to be.

Heavy Lifting: Canon EOS 5D, 24mm, ISO 200, 3.2s, f/8. Click to enlarge (Photo by Stephen Mallon)

At this point, do you find yourself fascinated by the question, "How the &^%#$ do they do that?" Then you share something in common with photographer Stephen Mallon, who is making a career in significant part out of a drive to shoot the answers, for this and many other industrial projects.

In this case, the answer is they floated it, and Mallon made a fascinating time-lapse film of the whole operation. At the construction yard, which is adjacent to the Hudson River, engineers pushed the bridge onto two barges that had been welded together. Then the whole apparatus was towed by three tugboats on a stately trip down the Hudson, around Manhattan, up the East River, and into place on the Harlem River. Actual travel time totaled three days.

Mallon's four-minute time-lapse video, called "A Bridge Delivered," was created from more than 30,000 still photos shot over five days, beginning in the construction yard near Albany and ending with the obligatory speeches by politicians as the bridge was bolted into position.


Moving Pictures: A Bridge Delivered (Video courtesy Stephen Mallon)

Chasing barges

Mallon's unique access to the bridge was the result of his ongoing connection, formed several years before, with Weeks Marine, a large marine construction, dredging, and salvage firm headquartered in Cranford, New Jersey. Weeks had been given the contract to handle the waterborne portion of the bridge's journey to its new home.

"I had done a time-lapse project years ago but wasn't really happy with the results," Mallon says, remembering the day when Weeks told him they would be moving the bridge. "[I thought] the complexity of [the move] would be an interesting segue into another time-lapse feature. I've had a lot of thoughts about video. I'm interested in it. I wanted to move into doing video without having to take on a giant investment. It made sense for me to go in and shoot this as a great piece for my reel. So I started pulling everything together."

As an established commercial pro in New York and mentor to many young photographers, Mallon had a network of colleagues, assistants, students, interns, and associates he could call on. Ultimately, nine photographers worked in 22 different locations as camera operators over the five days of the shoot.

Typically, he had three to four cameras operating on any given day, but eight were running on day two. They were manned by several different crews shooting simultaneously and in sequence along the bridge's route in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

The most surprising footage was shot on the bridge itself as it was moving in New York Harbor and up the East River. "We weren't 100% sure until the last minute, because of safety issues, whether we were going to be able to [be on the bridge]," Mallon says. "But the water was calm enough, so that was fantastic."

Photographer as director

Mallon acted, in essence, as the maestro of a camera symphony, conducting with a cell phone instead of a baton. "Part of the purpose of this was getting into the role of director and having some other people actually operate the cameras," Mallon says. "It's the director/producer role, and I'm loving it. My goal is to increase this exponentially, in both size and camera count."

Many shooting positions were pre-planned based on some location scouting coupled with Mallon's familiarity with New York waterfront areas, which he has gathered over several years of industrial shooting. Other locations were picked on the fly, especially on day one, when he and two assistants drove from spot to spot, staying one step ahead of the barges.

Mallon's shooting approach tended more towards the documentary, rather than the narrative, side of the spectrum. "I didn't storyboard it too much," he says, referring to the filmmakers' standard technique for tightly planning the scenes in a film. "But I did have the idea that I wanted to make sure there was a sense of closure. I wanted to make sure that we got the footage of the new bridge actually being put into place."

The cameras were all Canon digital SLR models and included the EOS 50D, EOS 5D, EOS 5D Mark II, and EOS-1Ds Mark III. When asked what lenses he used, Mallon says, "everything." In fact, wide-angle and wide-to-normal zooms predominated, especially the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, and the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. Several of the cameras and lenses were rented or borrowed from colleagues.

Each camera was triggered using a Canon Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3 set to shoot one frame every five seconds. Mallon did not vary the shooting rate for the bridge time-lapse. In one or two scenes, where he feels his coverage ended up short, he would change that if he could do it over—in the film, the floating bridge zooms under the Brooklyn Bridge in a quick flash, for example. Mallon has begun to experiment with varied framing rates, tailored to the speed of different subjects within the film, in more recent time-lapses.

In addition to needing cameras to be pre-positioned to capture a subject traveling many miles, Mallon needed to shoot many scenes from different perspectives—i.e. camera positions—simultaneously. An elementary concept for filmmakers, of course, this allows the film's editor to vary the audience's point of view. The two factors together caused Mallon some logistical problems at a scale not normally faced by still photographers.

"The main issues were data storage and power," Mallon says. "When you start realizing that you're going to have six cameras all shooting simultaneously, and each camera needs to have 30 to 50 gigabytes of storage—it takes a lot of [memory] cards." Battery life, especially in the older cameras, is borderline when you require a camera to shoot every five seconds continuously for several hours.

"And you need a lot of lenses," he adds, noting that it took his mind, used to still photography with a single camera, some time to adjust to the fact that if you want three cameras shooting wide angle perspective from three different positions, you need three copies of, say, your 16-35mm.

"The thinking aspect that has changed," he continues, "is keeping in mind the storytelling over the span of time rather than a single frame. It's been a mental shift to let things unfold and not try to capture the absolute precise moment. But it's coming along. I think as things progress it'll be easier to turn that switch."

30,000 images. One film.

Asked about his workflow, Mallon says, "I've got it working, but it's clunky."

All the images were shot in RAW format. From the cameras, they were imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3, where they were grouped into collections by shot location. In Lightroom they were cropped to the 16:9 HD video aspect ratio, edited to a finished state, then output as TIFF files at 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels).

The individual TIFF files, still grouped by location or scene, were then imported into Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended using its image sequence feature, which joins a folder of files into what will ultimately be a video clip. Next, each sequence was exported out of Photoshop as a QuickTime movie using the Apple ProRes 422 codec. The movie files were then loaded into Apple Final Cut Pro for video editing ("cutting," as filmmakers call it). Mallon hired a video editor named Princess Hairston for the editing job, a decision motivated by a previous video project. "I had cut it myself, and as soon as I was finished with that, I said this is the last film I'm ever cutting. This is why people get jobs as editors."

A fascination with big machines

Mallon has always been fascinated by machines and industrial processes. "[As a teenager], I was at runways and construction sites running back and forth photographing the bulldozers. I'm still entranced by the industrial era. One of my ideas for solving mid-life crises is to build a giant sandbox where everyone can come and drive their own bulldozer."

After college, he began assisting commercial photographers doing still life, food, celebrity, and corporate photography. Embarking on his own, he pursued then abandoned fashion photography, then began setting up and shooting lifestyle stock imagery for a series of agencies, culminating with Getty Images, who signed him in 2000. "It was enough to keep me alive for a number of years," he says, "but the stock [photography] market tanked with the rest of the print market."

All along, he'd been shooting industrial landscapes on his own. In the middle of the last decade, he began transitioning more and more to industrial landscapes and "worker" portraits, which he shot for stock using hired talent.

About three years ago, he "took the plunge and shut off the lifestyle part of my web site," he says. "I started showing this book [of industrial images] around. Some art buyers didn't get it, but some did." He landed jobs shooting the rebuilding of a Maytag appliance factory and a documentary project for a pharmaceutical company.

Mallon had also discovered Weeks Marine and an ongoing recycling project the company was doing—dumping decommissioned New York City subway cars into the Atlantic Ocean to create artificial reefs. He began photographing that as a personal project and cementing his relationship with the company.

Then in January 2009 U.S. Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 passenger jet, successfully ditched in the Hudson River with no loss of life among the 155 occupants—the famous "miracle on the Hudson." Weeks was contracted to salvage the airplane, and they hired Mallon to document the job.

Mallon began exhibiting Flight 1549 photos and subway car reef photos in art shows and galleries, and he's now represented by Front Room Gallery in New York. He offers his prints in three sizes in editions of five at each size. Prices range from US$1200 for a 20 x 30-inch (50 x 76cm) print to US$3600 for a 40 x 60-inch (100 x 152cm).

Hudson Recovery: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III + EF 17-40mm f/4L at 26mm, ISO 3200, 1/60, f/4. Click to enlarge (Photo by Stephen Mallon)

Subway Reef: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III + EF 17-40mm f/4L at 29mm, ISO 250, 1/250, f/13. Click to enlarge (Photo by Stephen Mallon)

For Mallon, fine art gallery sales give him a new and welcome audience, and a third, diversified income stream to go along with stock and editorial work. "There's been a number of months where my print sales have been higher than my royalties, which has been a nice shift in my life," he says. "Between assignments, royalties, and print sales, we're staying afloat. Not retiring yet by a long shot, but there's enough to stay ahead."

Mallon's immediate plans for the future include more time-lapse videos, and he's making plans for the sophisticated productions that his industrial subjects will require.

"I'm thinking about how to mount cameras and keep them waterproof," he says. "I know about portable battery systems but haven't tested any of them yet. I'm definitely going to. I'm also going to look at solar options, so [cameras] could potentially be powered on location for longer periods of time.

"At some point, we're going to be setting up cameras that are motion-controlled. I'm going to have to get more live sound going—audio interviews and just the mechanical noise of some of these locations. The textural sound of some of these places is amazing."

And as he says, video is on the horizon. "I'm sure I'm going to need to shoot a little of my own full motion with sound, edited, and shot as a final piece, before I get commissioned to do it. So I need a project that I actually want to spend the time on. Whenever I've done a test in the past, if I don't care about what I'm testing, it never gets finished. So I'm going to have to find a video that I actually want to make."

All of it will be in service of cementing his niche doing the industrial imagery he loves. "I'm finding fans of the work," he says. "They say, ‘I know what you do. I love your work. We're just waiting for the right project'. That's okay. I just make sure to stay in touch with those people.

"I'm looking to be able to do whatever form is appropriate. Still only. Still and video. Video only. For the fine art market I'm still going to be shooting stills. For editorial, yeah, whoever calls. I think all of them are going to want to have some [motion] web content if possible. For commercial, we'll see what the budget is. If I'm getting paid to direct, we'll start playing it out that way."

Energy: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III + EF 17-40mm f/4L at 17mm, ISO 100, 1/50, f/11. Click to enlarge (Photo by Stephen Mallon)

More of Stephen Mallon's industrial photographs on his website.

Miami!

(New York, NY – November 17, 2011): In two weeks time, Fountain Art Fair will return to Art Basel Miami Beach, taking over the 25th St / North Miami warehouse for its 6th consecutive year. Opening Thursday, December 1st for a VIP & Press Preview, Fountain once again will set itself apart from other internationally applauded fairs with its vivacious, rogue attitude and selection of the most cutting-edge alternative galleries and independent artists.

Fountain Exhibitor: Front Room Gallery

Featuring Stephen Mallon

Stephen Mallon, “Virginia Placement” (edition of 5)

Fountain Art Fair Miami

December 1–4, 2011

2505 North Miami Avenue (at the corner of 25th St) | Miami, FL 33137

General Hours: 12pm–7pm daily

Tickets: $10 daily / $15 weekend pass. All tickets sold at door.

The Front Room
open friday - sunday – 1 pm to 6 pm
147 roebling street
williamsburg, brooklyn
718.782.2556

On a Panel at Adorama

The Business of Photography: Staying on Point-Getting Ready for 2012-New Year, New Ideas Stop Looking in the Rearview Mirror and Just Drive the Car!

Moderator: Louisa Curtis, Chatterbox Enterprises

Panel:
Julie Grahame - Editor-in-Chief - aCurator
Andrea Verdone - Photo Editor - Women's Health Magazine
Steve Whittier - Creative Director - Y&R
Jess Dudley - Producer - Wonderful Machine
Rachel Rein - Senior Art Buyer - Hill Holiday
Chris Buck and/or Chris Crisman - Photographer
Stephen Mallon - Photographer & Videographer

Course Description:

As the year 2011 draws to a close, this round table panel (minus the table) assembled (not the table) and moderated by Louisa Curtis of Chatterbox Enterprises, is destined to be revealing as well as informative.

How does a photographer continue to “stay keen” and what sort of a plan should they be making for 2012? What do they need to do to stay on point and remain relevant in these changing times? What skills should they be sharpening and which should stay in the toolkit?

The panel is comprised of top photography professionals representing different areas of the industry who will be sharing their various insights and wisdom with us. The diverse group includes an Art Buyer, Creative Director, Photo Editors, a Producer and at least two Photographers.

After introductions to their backgrounds, Louisa will show some specific visual case studies provided by the panel, and then she will ask the panelists questions that are relevant and pertinent, from both the client’s and the photographer’s perspective.

Topics to be discussed include:

• What makes a photographer stand out from the crowd in today’s saturated market?
• How has the marketplace changed, and what do you anticipate seeing in the near future?
• Do you intend to make changes in how you promote yourself and your business, and if so, what are they?
• How much has “social networking” played a part in your promotions—and will you do more in the coming months?
• What have you done specifically to successfully grow your business?
• What topics does the panel see as most relevant now and into next year?
• What’s your biggest prediction for 2012?

And there will also be ample time for the audience to ask questions during the discussion.

When? Tuesday, November 29, 2011 5:30PM - 8:00PM

Where? The Adorama Building, 42 West 18th Street.

Price: $25.00

Click Here to register.

Bring your pen, notebook and you are ready!

Slideluck Auction & Fundraiser coming up!

Find Stephen Mallon's photograph in the auction list:

Young Photographer's Alliance 2011 Awards Ceremony & Benefit Auction

YPA Scholarships Program

YPA Scholarships allow young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to realize their artistic dreams and give back to their communities. To foster social and environmental responsibility in the photographers of tomorrow, scholarship recipients are selected not only for their ability and their need, but also for their demonstrated commitment to giving back to the larger community through their work.

This year’s Awards Ceremony and Benefit Auction will be held at the Calumet Gallery, New York, from 7pm to 10pm on Wednesday, October 19th.

• Location: Calumet Gallery, 22 W. 22nd Street | New York, NY 10010
• Date: Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
• Time: 7pm-10pm

The Awards Ceremony and Benefit Auction is YPA’s principal fundraising vehicle. The event is open to all and is a unique opportunity to meet leading players in the photography and stock image business, and to enjoy – and possibly acquire – some stunning photography, while celebrating and supporting young talent. Tickets cost $50 (or $75 at the door).

Benefit Auction

The Benefit Auction, which will begin at the Awards Ceremony and continue online until October 31st, will include highly collectable signed prints by renowned photographers Amy Arbus, Barbara Bordnick, Brad Trent, Cameron Davidson, Jill Enfield, Marcus Gaab, Martyn Thompson, Sebastian Smith, Toby McFarlan Pond, Vincent Dixon, Jimmy Fikes and others. There will also be prints by the 2011 YPA scholarship winners.

Aperture Foundation 2011 Benefit, Auction, and SNAP! Party

Monday, October 17

The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers

HONORING

Bruce Davidson, a Magnum Photos member and one of America’s most influential documentary photographers;

Gerhard Steidl, for his outstanding skill and craftsmanship as a printer and publisher;

Robert Anthoine, Aperture Chairman Emeritus, who has dedicated over thirty years to helping lead Aperture to prominence in the field of photographic publishing.

Benefit co-chairs are Sondra Gilman, Susan Gutfreund, and Karl Lagerfeld.

Auction co-chairs are Cathy Kaplan, Anne Stark, and D. Severn Taylor.

Immediately following the Benefit Dinner and Auction: 
SNAP! NEW COLLECTORS PROGRAM BENEFIT PARTY 
Featuring an exciting Emerging Artists Auction
Live jazz by DW-40
Spinning by Japanster
This event is co-chaired by artist Jowhara AlSaud, Peter Berberian of Gotham Imaging, Emily Bierman of Sotheby’s, and actor Ken Triwush.

Benefit Program

6:00–7:30 pm 
Cocktail reception and silent auction of classic and contemporary photographs

7:30–9:30 pm 
Dinner, brief award ceremony, and live auction conducted by Denise Bethel, Senior Vice President and Director of Photographs, Sotheby’s

9:30 pm–Midnight     
Benefit Party hosted by SNAP! New Collectors Program with live music and silent auction featuring works by emerging artists

To preview entire auction Click Here

NURTUREart 2011 Benefit

2011 Benefit

Tuesday, October 11th 2011

Chelsea Art Museum, 556 West 22nd Street, New York NY

Click here to buy a ticket!

NURTUREart is dedicated to nurturing new contemporary art by providing exhibition opportunities and resources for both emerging artists and curators. Founded in 1998 by George Robinson to realize his vision of a non-profit dedicated to supporting artists, NURTUREart is now located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the heart of emerging art in New York City.

La Lettre De La Photographie

I am very thankful to Elizabeth Avedon for this post about my work on La Lettre!

Stephen Mallon is 38 years old and comes from Britain. In the past he has traveled everywhere from Africa to Brazil, searching out artificial landscapes and industrial footprints. Now living in New York, he photographs industrial structures. Most people look at work sites and machinery and see nothing more than concrete and steel. Stephen looks at them and sees both a surreal beauty and the wonder of their engineering.

Stephen Mallon on David Schonauer's Blog

Posted on September 19, 2011 by davidschonauer
How I Got the Picture:
Stephen Mallon's Working Class

A Bridge Delivered from stephen mallon on Vimeo. To view, enter the password 300002011

The Willis Avenue Bridge in New York City was originally constructed in 1901 to span the Harlem River, connecting the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. In 2005, the New York City Department of Transportation decided to replace the aging structure, which had become too costly to maintain. The old bridge was sent to Jersey City, where its steel was melted and its concrete turned into landfill. A new bridge was built at Port of Coeymans, on the Hudson River 136 miles north of New York City. At 350 feet long, 65 feet high, and 77 feet wide, the new bridge required two tugboats to move it down the Hudson. It was taken first to Jersey City and, on the morning of July 26, 2010, it was towed up the East River to its final destination. The bridge, which cost $612 million, opened for business on October 2, 2010, the latest piece of New York City’s vast network of roads, tunnels, and bridges, a physical symbol or urban connectedness.

What some saw as infrastructure, however, Stephen Mallon saw as art, and a symbol of America at work. Mallon is a Brooklyn-based photographer who has built a promising career by focusing on the industrial landscape. He has created art projects by documenting the salvage of U.S. Air Flight 1549 from the Hudson River and the delivery of a Concorde supersonic airplane to the U.S.S. Intrepid museum in New York. (His work, represented by The Front Room Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been featured at the Verge and Fountain art fairs in Miami.) He has also shot commercial and editorial work for clients like Maytag, Microsoft, Forbes, and Fortune magazines. He is repped by Working Artists.

Mallon’s work harkens back to the heroic industrial landscapes of Margaret Bourke-White and Charles Sheeler, who glorified American steel and found art in its industrial muscle and smoke during the Great Depression. That particular sense of beauty—a celebration of daring, and design—has during recent decades largely been relegated to corporate annual reports. Today, with a U.S. unemployment rate of 9.1 percent and political crisis of confidence over the nation’s economy, Mallon’s imagery offers a decidedly uplifting viewpoint. In his pictures, American industrial muscle is back—in a modern way.

A New York City subway car being recycled as an artificial reef

The abstract beauty of an oil refinery

“It shows the muscle, without being obnoxious about it,” he says. Mallon has documented the building of a Coney Island roller coaster and the recycling of New York City subway cars to build an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as oil refineries and huge warehouses.

Documenting the salvage of U.S. Air flight 1549 from the Hudson River

Flight 1549's control panel, photographed during the salvage

Among his influences he cites the industrial landscape photography of Edward Burtynski, but one can sense the differences between the two. Burtynski’s images–vast Chinese factories filled with faceless armies of workers, black mountains of discarded tires, bright rivers of industrial runoff—are cautionary tales of man’s industrial footprint on the natural world. Mallon’s work is a more hopeful view of what used to be called “progress.” At its best, the imagery reflects the grit and ingenuity of a people and a nation whose work is also a mission.

Bridge Work

That sense mission is certainly on display in the project Mallon created about the Willis Avenue Bridge. Mallon conceived the project after consulting with executives at Weeks Marine, the company that brought the new bridge down the Hudson and up the East River. (Weeks also salvaged Flight 1549.) But he realized early in his planning that the project was an opportunity to update a traditional photographic documentary into something new.

“This came about because of the pressure of changes in the market where everyone is pushing for video content,” says Mallon. “I wanted something to help my transition from still photography into motion.”

Working with a crew of 12, Mallon positioned digital 35mm SLR cameras at 22 locations along the bridge’s route. “I drove to every single location and set up the camera–here’s the lens to use, here’s the shot I want. And using GPS on our cell phones we could schedule a crew to be there to shoot as the tugs towed the bridge past the camera,” says Mallon. “And with a couple of the shots, I would tell the cameraman to pan 90 degrees as the barge passed, following it, get it going away.”

Over the course of the bridge’s journey, Mallon and his crew shot some 30,000 still images, all in RAW format, which he then processed in Adobe Lightroom and output at QuickTime clips. “The file sizes were gigantic—you’re looking at something with the resolution of an IMAX film,” says Mallon. He then turned the material over to Brooklyn-based film editor Princess Hairston. She and Mallon worked for five days to construct a four-minute cut.

The film, titled “A Bridge Delivered,” is being featured in a number of festivals this year, including the 24 fps Film Festival and the Woodstock Film Festival on September 21. Such are the rewards of work well done.

Click here to go to David Schonauer's blog

New downtown Brooklyn hotel boasts artwork from more than 77 local artists

Brooklyn

New downtown Brooklyn hotel boasts

artwork from more than 77 local artists
BY ERIN DURKIN

DAILY NEWS WRITER

Tuesday, September 20th 2011, 4:00 AM

Linda Rosier/News

The Brooklyn Arts Council selected some of these artists to create works for the new Hotel 718 on Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn.

A new downtown Brooklyn hotel is decking itself out entirely in art by Brooklyn artists.

Hotel 718, set to open later this year on Duffield St., is sinking more than $100,000 into original art for hallways, building walls, the lobby and even the roof.

"You see art in every hotel out there, and all of them are working with just generic art supply companies," said Daniel Reznik, director of operations for V3 Hotels, the chain that is developing Hotel 718.

"We have no reason to go outside our own borough to supply art," he said. "We have a wonderful opportunity to tap into a very artistic and energetic community."

They've picked out 77 pieces so far out of more than 600 submissions to line the corridors in 17 of the building's 19 floors - everything from paintings to photographs to etchings and collages.

"It was an overwhelming response," Reznik said. "We just wanted to give the artists a blank slate for anything and everything."

They're still sifting through submissions for a dramatic piece for the lobby and a metal creation for the roof, and looking for someone to paint a massive mural outside. "We're still on the hunt," Reznik said.

There are also plans to develop an iPhone app that will give more information about each work of art and a biography of the artist.

Ramona Candy, 59, of Clinton Hill contributed a dreamlike photo etching called "And Their Language Turns to Song."

"It's fabulous that they're using Brooklyn artists," Candy said. "It's called Hotel 718 - why would you use anybody else?

"It's showing how much art and creativity has always lived in Brooklyn, even when Brooklyn wasn't the most popular place to live or create," she said.

Sheila Goloborotko, 52, of Boerum Hill had two of her prints made with aluminum plates and gold leaf selected. She said she's excited to have her work displayed for visitors from around the country and the world.

"I never imagined when I moved to Brooklyn that this was going to be an international neighborhood," she said. "It's an amazing thought that we now have hotels built, one across from the other.

"Brooklyn has incredible talent," she said. "When you put real art in hallways of a hotel it gives you a feeling that you are home. It's not the poster you see in every Holiday Inn."

Click here to read more.