I’ve been living in Greenpoint for about a year now.  In that time I’ve learned to curse the G train, stumbled into the Black Rabbit several times and depended on a Brooklyn Burrito from Papacitos to satiate my hunger on a Sunday morning.  I’ve also spent hours walking around with my camera, and I’m fairly certain I’ve covered just about every block.  Inspired by the work of Brian Rose and a few others who have focussed on single neighborhoods, I decided to make Greenpoint my next project.

I didn’t have any big plans for the project.  I figured starting out with a camera and a location was good enough.  Then after I looked at the photographs, I’d make more decisions about the direction I wanted to take. This is the way I’ve always worked. Epic, multi-year projects aren’t my thing. I applaud those that work that way, but it’s not for me.  At least, not from where I’m standing right now.

Because in fact, I maybe working on one, very long project and each of these little projects might only be chapters. There’s no way to tell. I don’t have ambitions of winning any photography contests, getting a book deal or having my work hang in a gallery in Chelsea.  I have no ambitions other than to make the photographs I want to make, organized the way I want to organize them, sharing them the way I want to share them, and right now, that means the internet.

Someday I’d like to see the work in a book. In fact, I’m working on a book of my California photographs. It’s been a few years now, and I have a different perspective on the work. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the work needed the appropriate words to accompany it.  So now I’m working the words.  In my head it feels almost complete.  That’s only part of the battle though.  Making the work a physical reality is a different story.  I’ll take my time to make sure I get it right.

It’s strange to sit in a tiny apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and look back on work I made a few years ago, trying to figure out what compelled me to make the photographs.  Looking at the photographs repeatedly while drinking a few beers can help. Writing helps more, but both create a dissonance with living in the now, here in Brooklyn.

Why am I making these new photographs? Why Greenpoint? What about those photographs I made when I first arrived in New York City and had no idea how long I’d be here? They’re different than these new photographs.

The truth is I don’t know about these Greenpoint photographs.  About a month ago, I decided I’d photograph in other neighborhoods as well.  Perhaps Greenpoint was a fictional place for me, and since photographs lie, why not push and prod the lie?  Then I figured something out, I could call the project Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  It could be about Greenpoint and Brooklyn.  Freedom! Cleverness! Eureka!

The euphoria of creative insight only lasts so long though.  I was back out on Sunday, photographing around Fort Greene.  I made some photographs I thought were ok.  What has been strange about photographing this year is that it’s the first time in about four years that I’ve photographed without a sense of urgency.  For whatever reason, I could stop making these type of photographs tomorrow and move onto something else. Perhaps I’ll load up my Bessa with Neopan 1600 and make blurry, grainy, abstract black and white photographs.  I don’t know. I don’t really know much these days about the photographs I’m making, other than making them is still challenging and enjoyable.

I figure I have a few more months of decent weather to wander around before winter makes it unbearable to spend time outside.  That should equate to several hours of meditating and thinking about photographs and Greenpoint and Brooklyn.

Writing and photographs by Bryan Formhals