Gritty Gotham’s Collab With Delphine Le Goff

Street photographer Gritty Gotham has been creating unvarnished images that capture the EV’s chancey charm for years and now he has teamed with one the neighborhood’s premiere sketch artists on a series of fanciful and engaging new works.

Delphine @displaybydelphine is the EV artist and neighborhood raconteur whose impressionist sketches capture edifices and street life in the neighborhood and beyond. She is also a partner in the thrift and art store 3rd & B’zaar @3rdandbzaar, where her work is for sale.

Delphine was an admirer of Gotham’s work and since both artists are committed to documenting life in the neighborhood, it was only natural that the two should team up.

Delphine has been featured in B Scene Zine several times over the years, so you all know her and her work well, but Gotham @grittygotham is new to our pages. We asked him to provide a few photos and to outline his photography practice:

My photography practice began by accident. It was the summer of 2017 and I had just bought a brand new digital camera, a Sony a7r2. I planned on using it to shoot video, but the first time I snapped the shutter on a still photo, something clicked inside me as well. Cringey but true. It was a photo of a man in a vintage Cadillac on 10th street and avenue C, staring intently at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn green. The photo turned out kind of great, I thought. The quality of the camera did the heavy lifting, but there was something else about it. It looked like a relic of a bygone era. It got me thinking about the world around me in New York City. 

Bus Stop Boys

New Yorkers like to say, "you should have been here when....". Everyone's got their own version of it. There is a built-in reverence, even a fetish for, "The Old New York". When people say that, they're usually talking about a time when things were edgier, dangerous, more alive . "Gritty" is a word they use a lot. Most often, they're referring to the 1970s and 1980s (although now the 90s and even 2000s have entered the chat). The city's past has left an indelible mark on the cultural identity of the present, and it's self-referential, particularly Downtown where I lived when I snapped that first photo in the Alphabet City section of the East Village. And I'm not above the fray, either. I too fell in love with "The Old New York '' the day I moved here, nostalgic for a time and place that I never experienced. These neighborhoods are still informed by that spirit, and generations of people have come here from all over the world to feel it for themselves. 

Elliot

So, back to that first photo. Naturally, I uploaded it to Instagram. I had this thought: "What would it have been like if they had social media back in "The Old New York"? In the caption underneath the photo I wrote the date. May 15th....1984. I gave my (1984) self a pseudonym. Wyatt Abernathy. And I called the account, Gritty Gotham. 

I proceeded to take more photos, looking to capture the essence of that first one. I looked for people and places that appeared timeless. The plan was to post a new image every day, for the entire year of "1984". I was mostly fucking around, but somewhere along the line I became really invested in it, and taking it seriously. It became a passion, and at times, an obsession. That's when my photographs started getting better. It was exciting. I spent hours on the streets with my camera, traveling to every borough in the city, making portraits of people who are somehow on the fringes in ways that make them unique to New York City.

Larry Valentino

Then something unexpected happened. This practice became something of a meditation, a way of (ironically) being in the present, in a way that I had never experienced before. I think most street photographers can attest to this feeling, and I think it's how all artists feel while in the throes of their craft. Street photography can also be very trippy and serendipotous. There is a certain magic to the experience, the encounters, and the interconnectedness of it all that makes you feel part of something bigger and unseen. New York City has its own special brand of this feeling. 

Eventually, (after a nearly three year hiatus where I actually didn't take any photographs whatsoever) I finished my project. I had made a post for every single day of "1984". But I wasn't done with photography. I put down my Sony and picked up a film camera, a vintage Nikon FE2 (from the 80's of course). I ditched the gimmick and the restrictions that came with the "1984" project and I leaned into photography for photohraphy's sake. That's where I'm at now, and I think I'm doing my best work. It's still just a hobby, but I'm very proud of it, and I love sharing it with people, on that same Instagram account, but especially in the physical form. To see my photographs IRL on a wall somewhere is truly a blessing, and I'm very grateful to New York City, especially the "Old" New York City, for being such an endlessly inspiring place.