Frame Notes
A close-cropped portrait of a woman in her sixties looking directly at the camera, soft window light from the left.

Doña Marisol, who has run the same panadería on 5th Avenue since 1991. Mamiya RB67 · 90mm · Portra 400

Faces of the Borough · Portrait

Faces of the Borough

Twelve portraits made on a single block in Sunset Park, made on a single afternoon in April.

· Sunset Park, Brooklyn · 9 min read

I have wanted to shoot a block portrait project for years. The format is simple: pick a single block in a single neighborhood, set up a portable backdrop on the sidewalk, and photograph every person who is willing to stop for ten minutes. The reason I had not done it yet is that it requires a kind of social stamina that I am not naturally built for — you have to ask, ask again, and not take it personally when the answer is no.

In April I finally did it on a single block of 5th Avenue in Sunset Park, the stretch between 50th and 51st Streets. Sunset Park is one of those Brooklyn neighborhoods that gets described as "in transition" by every newspaper article that has ever been written about it, which is another way of saying nothing about it specifically. The block I picked has a panadería that has been there since 1991, a Chinese herbalist next door, a bodega on the corner, a small barbershop that doubles as a bookmaker on weekends, and a brand-new natural wine bar with the lights still off in the middle of the day.

A teenage boy in a hoodie, half-smiling, leaning against a graffiti-covered wall in soft afternoon light.
Hector, 17. Wanted to be photographed in his Yankees hoodie or not at all. Mamiya RB67 · 90mm · Portra 400

I worked with a single roll of seamless gray paper taped to a wall behind the bodega and a single Mamiya RB67 with one lens. No assistant, no light meter besides the back of my hand. The whole point of the format is that it has to be transparent — people can see the entire camera setup before they decide whether to step in front of it — so I tried to keep everything visible and slow. The slowness is part of what makes people say yes.

“The whole point is transparency. People can see the entire setup before they decide. The slowness is what makes them say yes.”
A man in a chef's apron and white t-shirt, arms crossed, standing in a doorway with a faint kitchen behind him.
Edwin, who has worked the line at the diner across the street for eleven years. Mamiya RB67 · 90mm · Portra 400

I made twelve portraits in three hours. The conversations were longer than the exposures, which is the way I prefer to work. Doña Marisol talked about which streets used to flood in the eighties; Hector told me, gently, that I was holding the camera wrong; Edwin showed me a phone photo of his daughter's quinceañera. Every portrait you see in this set is somebody who chose to step in front of the camera knowing exactly what it was.

An older man with kind eyes and a flat cap, half-laughing in three-quarter profile.
Mr. Ng, the herbalist next door to the panadería. Born in Guangzhou, in Sunset Park since 1979. Mamiya RB67 · 90mm · Portra 400

The project will continue. I want to do the same exercise — single block, single afternoon, single setup — on at least ten more blocks across the borough. The eventual book is called Faces of the Borough and there is no publisher yet, only a working dummy and a Dropbox link I have been sending to friends. If you live on a block where you think this would work, write to me.

Filed under portrait · part of Faces of the Borough.

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