The Newtown Pentacle

Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi

nemesis mirror

with one comment

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Friendless, scuttling, ever scuttling. Camera clutched tightly, filthy black raincoat flapping about, sometimes it’s hard not to feel just hopeless.

Dutch Kills in Long Island City, where you can abandon oil barges and just get away with it. Nothing matters and nobody cares.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Dutch Kills, where multiple city owned wastewater pipes belch hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the water, in the glowing shadow of those luxury condominiums which multiply and magnify the problem. The sewer plant that services this area was built in 1936 when half of Astoria and Sunnyside were still agricultural land.

Dutch Kills, which once allowed for a connection between harbor based and rail based freight.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Dutch Kills, where concrete plants and other industrial businesses have been allowed to expand onto and squat upon the public sidewalks with zero repercussions for generations.

Around Dutch Kills, in the hottest real estate zone in the entire City, you don’t have to look too long to find streets that don’t even offer sidewalks for pedestrians.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Dutch Kills, across the street from CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College and within 3 blocks of multiple charter schools serving Junior and Senior High School students.

Dutch Kills, where a collapsing bulkhead is undermining 29th street. That’s a situation which the operator of the street – NYC DOT, the owner of the land – MTA, and the regulator who governs areas which touch the water – NYS DEC, all admit that “yes this is a dangerous situation” but do nothing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Dutch Kills, where NYC DOT exclaimed that they would put up barriers to keep people from parking over the collapsing street, and have done nothing.

When I was shooting this series of images, it occurred to me that it would be a good thing to illuminate the void under that parked car.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Dutch Kills, where a quick bit of flashlight light painting was perpetrated while the shutter was open. I use an LED model light, which has a bluish cast to it.

Dutch Kills, lords and ladies, where nothing matters and nobody cares.


“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

Buy a book!

In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.

Written by Mitch Waxman

April 15, 2022 at 11:00 am

One Response

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  1. […] orb,” “harmless stupidity,” “plumbed descent,” “yellow rays,” “crawl proudly,” “nemesis mirror,” “ugly trifles,” “torture of,” “verdant valleys,” “budding branches,” “crystal […]


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