A longtime photographer of Lower Manhattan has taken close-up photos of the World Trade Center and mounted them on a scaffolding on East Fourth Street, just out of reach.

Brian Rose, the photographer behind “WTC,” said he was inspired to prepare the outdoor exhibit after cleaning negatives of World Trade Center photos he took as long as 30 years ago. In the process of ridding the film of dust, he zoomed in on it and became mesmerized by the architectural beauty of the towers’ details.

“’WTC’ was never a project, it was found,” Mr. Rose said.
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One of my favorite parts of street photography is that I never have any idea what I’m going to shoot when I go out walking around. For the most part, it’s about turning a corner and getting hit with something goofy, or beautiful, or one-in-a-million. You can go just about anywhere in New York City and expect the unexpected, of course, but somehow the East Village just seems to generate more of those moments. Here are a few recent shots that took me by surprise.
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In a city where the streets double as runways, Michelle Rick shares her experience capturing local fashionistas.

“Like any girl with a TV set in New York during the 1970s and 80s, I formed my first impression of “high” fashion watching the Ritz Thrift Shop commercial. It evoked everything glamorous about that time: mother dabbing Givenchy perfume on her wrist, and Bloomingdale’s, which was the height of chic. I return to my comfort zones almost every day to take pictures; a red wall where I know how the light hits at 5 p.m., for example.”
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Photographer David Schmidlapp shares photos (his own as well as a couple by Marlis Momber) from the archives of El Jardin del Paraiso on East Fourth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D, where he has volunteered for nearly 30 years. His work can currently be seen in the Nepenthes New York Gallery on 38th Street.

Marlis Momber The garden in the winter of 1982 or 1983.

They demolished a lot of buildings in the neighborhood around the mid-1970s. This is how it looked east of First Avenue back then. You could see all the way to Seventh Street, and from Seventh Street you could see all the way to the Con Edison plant. There was plenty of parking back then. Read more…

Ross Bennett Lewis on capturing neighborhood creatives.

Silver Print / First Avenue, 1995

“Tompkins Square Park with the surrounding avenues and streets offer an endless milieu of unexpected finds. Photographing people is most challenging yet very rewarding. I admire people with creative energy and their endeavors. After losing so many people to AIDS in the 1980s, I was disappointed in not having taken wonderful black and white images of them, so by the early 1990s I resumed shooting in black and white, using analog cameras and film. Years later these photographs become historical, as they have a different texture than digital. New York City has an abundance of material to shoot, whether it be people, architecture or just recording the quality of light and city life.”
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Phoenix Eisenberg on capturing the complexity of limitations.

“I want to give people a reason to be interested in the things they would normally dismiss– by making the unattractive look beautiful, the crazed look understandable, or the pristine seem imperfect. I want people to understand that it is the imperfections in our lives that make us so interesting.”
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Adrian Fussell on the beauty of taking photographs in an urban setting.

“People on the street give me endless fleeting moments of beauty. In capturing them, I try to make the viewer feel the irony of a scene, feel empathy for the subject, or show a unique juxtaposition. I’m training myself to be ready for those decisive moments in the random chaos of people going about their daily lives.”
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Susan Keyloun takes a look at a subway station that’s been closed for more than six decades.

“When I catch a glimpse of Old New York on my peripatetic jaunts throughout this fascinating city, I can’t help but celebrate her history. My most recent glimpse: the abandoned 18th Street Subway station, which was opened to the public in 1904 and shuttered in 1948. I visited the station, at 18th Street and Park Avenue South, with an accommodating MTA employee who took photos of the station since I was not allowed to go below ground.”

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Michael Pearce on photographing scale and motion.

“The multitude of neighborhoods that make up NYC and the surrounding boroughs allow for an endless number of photographic opportunities. If the scene calls for it, I try to include the human form to add a sense of scale or motion. As NYC is a giant melting pot, there is never a shortage of interesting characters to capture in the frame.”
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Julie Turley, Shawn Hoke, Kenan Christiansen and Lindsay Wengler, members of The Local East Village Flickr Group, share their images of a murals outside Mars Bar in recent years.

Shawn Hoke

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Roey Ahram, Clark Carr, Rachel Citron, Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Joshua Davis, Dave DiRoma, Vivienne Gucwa, Shawn Hoke, Meghan Keneally, Scott Lynch, Clint McMahon, Michael Natale, Michah Saperstein and Lindsay Wengler — all members of The Local East Village Flickr Group — share their images of Mars Bar through the years.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you’d like a chance to see your best shots appear on The Local, join The Local East Village Flickr Group.