Printable View
Not sure if this is "guarded" by a paywall, since I'm a subscriber, but the NY Times printed a special section on Wiletts Point, a run-down area of Queens known for its many auto-repair businesses largely run by minorities. What makes this of interest to us is that the photographs are all modern tintypes shot on 4x5, an exercise assisted by the Penumbra Foundation which specializes in alternative photographic processes. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...sultPosition=1
Great story and really nice photographs. Thank you.
Thanks for posting. I am a subscriber.
I once knew the Uptown Chicago version very well. 4 short years, I sold tools from truck to exactly that type of repair shop. Uptown in the 1920's was once the best neighborhood in Chicago, but had gone way downhill when I arrived in 1980. The huge High School spoke 27 languages. 100's of auto repair shops, where I learned to sell to them all. Most repair shop workers were far younger than the NYC pics and eager to buy what I sold, many by old world bartering squating on the floor.
Then a nasty divorce changed my life to living in a SRO and very close to homeless, until one of my old customers sat me down over coffee and said 'you need a job'.
The next day I was working in an unheated alley car repair shop. The shop was an old wood horse carriage garage. It was a hard snowy winter. Some customers were drug dealers that wanted gun hides. We made them. Lots of murders.
Very cold and very hot in summer. I worked for cash for a year until the phone rang one day and it was for me. First phone call in several years. A former employer had tracked me down and gave me a far better job in their Product Test Lab, where I stayed until 2008.
The alley shop was 2 blocks from Charlie Chaplin's Essanay Studios, still there.
The Rise And Fall Of Chicago's Essanay Studios
and now uptown is rebuilding
great to see penumbra working in this fashion. thanks for sharing!Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Lewin
Beautiful article shot with dignity
Another "there goes the neighborhood "