Stefano Giovannini's photojournals and archives

A place show new images of daily life in NYC from politics to art, fine food to survival from hunger. Also a selection older photos from my archives: travel, music, art, portraits, photojournalism. Click on an image for a slideshow and navigate with the <- arrow keys -->

[stefpix]

Tulum 2014, a set on Flickr.

added more Tulum photos

[stefpix]

Unarchived.

Chinatown, Manhattan NY

2002

Lisa Davies, editorial for NYLON magazine, styled by Ben Sturgill. I was new to NY and new to digital photography. I used for these a small Canon point and shoot camera. Probably was 3 or 4 megapixels. Lisa Davies was great. She got some prestigious editorials after getting some of these in NYLON magazine. Sometimes I think it would be fun to do more stuff like this. Time has made me a better photographer but my photography took a different direction.

The camera was a Canon Powershot S40 

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons40

You can now still buy it used on Amazon for $45.

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April 2014

plants I have been growing for a while. Some flowers I enjoyed during the long cold winter and disappointing spring.

In the past I was able to put plants outside earlier in the year and get that vigorous healthy grow that sunlight provides.

I always enjoy the Brassavola grandiflora, a native orchid  from Southern Mexico and other nearby countries that regularly flowers every few months. The blooms are strongly perfumed at night, a scent that reminds of allspice and cinnamon

I am growing several Maxillarias that seem to be easy to flower.

And I really like my red mangrove (Rhizopghora mangle)  seedlings growing faster than I thought in a jar of water. On beaches in Florida, even in South Beach , there are dozens of these mangrove propagules washed up on the sand. to the untrained eye they may look like some piece of seaweed, but if put in a pot or glass with water they will grow roots and leaves

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Swoon and Judy Chicago art show preview.

Brooklyn Museum, April 10 2014

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Greenpoint, Polish people and storefronts

March 25, Brooklyn NY

Greenpoint is rapidly changing.

For years it was possible to eat very inexpensive dishes like pierogis and borscht at many Polish restaurants. Or get delicious Polish donuts with rose or plum filling at one of the many bakeries.

The neighborhood is getting rapidly developed and new high rise luxury buildings are on their way, possibly transforming the quaint neighborhood in a similar way nearby Long Island City has.

New coffee shops like Budin or Grumpy charger $3 for a regular drip coffee and $5 - $10 for a cappuccino. I wonder when the leases of the old Polish business will be up if the business owners will be able to afford to stay. At Polonia restaurant $5 could get me a whole lunch, not just a cup of coffee. 

I ran into a Polish lady at the Salvation Army store on Manhattan ave. She was wearing leopard print and brown. She told me she always wear no more than 2 colors only.

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NYC's mayor De Blasio announces expansion of paid sick leave.

Bushwick, Brooklyn NY, Jan 17 2014

New York City business with more than five employees will have to provide sick leave.  The announcement on Myrtle avenue in Bushwick was one of the first initiatives that De Blasio took since becoming mayor.

The crowd included many council members, the council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and public advocate Letitia James and many cheering Spanish speaking supporters.

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Warehouse burned down in Greenpoint

March 18-19 2014 Brooklyn NY

A huge fire destroyed a recycling paper warehouse in Greenpoint.

The fire started in the early evening of Tuesday March 18 and was put under control more than 12 hours later, 

It happened on Humboldt street at the corner of Greenpoint ave.

There were no casualties. The air felt toxic hours later and the building has to be demolished

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UnArchived

Club in the shadow.  part 2

West Village, Manhattan, NY 2002

Club In The Shadow, a collaboration between artists Kim Gordon Jutta Koether, at Kenny Schachter’s Contemporary Gallery in New York City, U.S. In 2003. Cameras got so much better since then, I became a better and more consistent photographer. The shows were free, a gathering of friends and minds. 10 years and change have gone by. The building that housed the gallery designed by Vito Acconci has been demolished and now some luxury residential glass buildings stand where the old cobblestoned block used to be. Some people pictured died, other moved, we all aged. Sometimes I miss that spirit, but i am happy of the experiences lived and learned. If I could go back and shoot with my current DSLR and confidence it would be ideal.

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New mural at East Houston street New York City. February 2014

Muralist, artist Maya Hayuk working on a mural on a very cold winter day at East Houston street at the corner with Bowery, Downtown Manhattan, New York NY © stefano giovannini 2014

http://www.mayahayuk.com/

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Arts+Feminism.

Project Continua’s Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

at the Brooklyn Museum. February 1, 2014

from 

http://www.public-engagement.org/take-part-in-project-continuas-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-21/

Associate Professor of Women’s Studies Gina Luria Walker is initiating Project Continua, an online multimedia resource that documents and preserves women’s intellectual history. Much like Wikipedia, the Project Continua site will be widely accessible and collaboratively edited—collating and building upon recent feminist empirical research on historical women.

The idea for Project Continua developed from Female Biography Project, a working group of scholars Walker created as editor of the Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays’s six volume Female Biography (1803). Project Continua makes new and existing data about female thinkers throughout world history available online in a “female biography” archive with searchable content entries.

http://www.projectcontinua.org/

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(best viewed in HD directly  on Vimeo) 5 minutes in Quintana Roo Mexico Some footage I shot in the villages of Tulum, Akumal Francisco Uh Mai and the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in Quintana Roo state of Mexico. I mostly took still photos, video was just a bit of an after thought. — in Quintana Roo, Mexico. 

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Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY, September 2011

Maya Hayuk paint pour over Monster Island.

artist Maya Hayuk organized a paint pour over the Monster Island building that housed artist studios, galleries and performance spaces.

The landlord did not renew the lease after 7 years.

The exterior walls of the building were covered with layers of art.

Maya a muralist artist  over the years decided that covering the whole building with paint would be a good way to draw the curtain on the lost space.

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http://www.mayahayuk.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/arts/music/monster-island-to-close-and-underground-clubs-lose-a-haven.html?_r=0

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Prospect Park, Brooklyn NY Feb 2014

Cygnus olor, an Eurasian swan was introduced in North America in the mid 19th century.  New York State is proposing to exterminate all these swans by 2025 as they are an invasive species affecting the environment. 

I wonder if human development in the past 100 years has affected less the wetlands of the area than these swans. 

Recently the Canada Geese have been culled.

http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/02/new-york-has-plan-wipe-out-swans-all-them/357677/

http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7076.html

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Tulum, Mexico May 2013

Morelet's crocodile (Crocodylus moreletii, also known as Mexican crocodile or Belize crocodile) near Tulum, Mexico. 

I went swimming at a lesser known cenote outside Tulum. It is a small freshwater pond popular with some scuba divers that go exploring the cave system that connects this small lake to other bodies of water. 

It is a very quiet place, without the large groups of tourists that visit nearby Gran Cenote every day. There is a lot of vegetation in the forest around the pond with many native orchids like Vanilla planifolia and Encyclia belizensis. 

The pond is about 7 m (22 ft) deep and the water at the bottom is very clear and colder while the top half is milky with no visibility.

There are 2 Mexican crocodiles living in the pond. They are about 5 year old and they eat the abundant fish. 

One of the crocodiles rests usually in the same muddy spot, except when scuba divers are present as they seem to dislike the sound of the bubbles underwater. 

I just went with my snorkeling gear, and with patience and slow moving it was possible to take photos of the crocodile without spooking it. 

My underwater camera, Nikon AW100 was very slow at writing files on the memory card, making really hard to take good photos from below the water. There was sometimes a 10 second delay. Ever since Nikon service replaced my camera with the newer AW110 that would have been a lot better for this.

I saw another crocodile in a much larger cenote closer to the ocean near the Sian ka'an nature preserve. The water there was brackish and in that case it could have been an American crocodile that is larger and prefers brackish or salt water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morelet's_crocodile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sian_Ka'an

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote

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Late artist Mike Kelley retrospective show at MoMA's PS1 museum in Long Island City, Queens NY.

The guards guarding the artwork stand 1 hour straight before a break / bathroom break.

Kelley's older, less polished work was on the third floor. I enjoyed that section more due to the smaller crowd and a more immediate art.

from a couple of websites:

"Kelley, an LA-based artist, killed himself last year, and has been called a "genius" for his wide range of work, from drawing to sculpture to performance art. A curator friend Emi Fontana told the LA Times, "He had a deep discomfort in seeing what the art world is now. He didn't like the fact that everything has become so corporate. He said to me: 'If I were to start now, I would never become a visual artist.' He really wanted to be an important artist, and he worked all of his life for that. He found himself at the top of his game and then found that the world he was at the top of was a world that he didn't like. That's intense existentially.""

http://gothamist.com/2014/02/02/todays_the_last_day_to_see_mike_kel.php

" "When I asked him if he ever believed in Heaven and Hell, he responded deliberately, in his deep, gravelly Detroit accent, 'No. I never believed in anything.' He seemed sad when he said that, with a faraway look in his eyes.""

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-chafin/mike-kelley_b_1261270.html

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Lee Ranaldo sound performance for  Sight Unseen with  Leah Singer's visuals at SHOW ROOM art gallery, 460 Union St. Gowanus Brooklyn, NY

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Lower East Side, Manhattan NY 2005.

One morning I noticed this couple on the Lower East Side. They sounded strung out. They had trouble with a payphone and let them use my cell phone to make what sounded like an urgent call

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Giant golden orb weaver spiders (Nephila clavipes) in Miami. 

I noticed really large webs extending between different trees in Little Haiti near sidewalks and people yards. The spiders can be very large and from a distance look like they are suspended in the air. 

The females are colorful and their size is about 4 - 4 inches (or 10 - 12 cm.), while the males are a lot smaller and muted in colors. 

I saw a lot more near Coral Gables at Chapman Field park, an unspoiled, undeveloped area of thick mangroves where American crocodiles are present in the ocean and the brackish waterways. 

Many spiderwebs were extending across the footpath with the large Nephila spiders waiting motionless for some prey to be trapped. 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_clavipes

The silk of N. clavipes has recently been used to help in mammalian neuronal regeneration. In vitroexperiments showed that a single thread of silk can lead a severed neuron through the body to the site from which it was severed. This single thread has a tensile strength of 4×109 N/m2, which exceeds that of steel by a factor of six. Best of all for these experiements, it is not recognized by the immune system, and so, is not rejected by the host body.[2]

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With regards to the bite of the animal — it is potent, but it’s nowhere near deadly for humans. The type of poison is similar to that used by black widows, but much less powerful. What you can typically expect from a bite is some redness, discomfort, blisters, and possible swelling — this should all pass within a day or two though. Of course there are those that may possess allergies to the venom, in which case it could be much more dangerous.

Read more at http://planetsave.com/2013/06/14/banana-spider-golden-silk-orb-weaver-facts-pictures-bite-effects-etc/#XVgvcSeOTdVmKjov.99

The Nephila genus of spiders is the oldest surviving spider genus in the world. The oldest known species from that genus lived at least 165 million years ago, and was remarkably similar looking to several species still alive today.

Read more at http://planetsave.com/2013/06/14/banana-spider-golden-silk-orb-weaver-facts-pictures-bite-effects-etc/#XVgvcSeOTdVmKjov.99