36 pages
printed in England
staple bound
14cm x 20cm

American TV cop shows, a postcard, and a lifelong fascination with America.

As a young kid in Leeds in the seventies, I sat with Dad looking longingly through his Royal Navy photo album. Tantalising images and postcards with sticky corners offered glimpses of an adventurous life and places I never heard of and never expected to see.

Dad wished to see the world. At eighteen and unbeknownst to his parents he signed on the dotted line and joined the Royal Navy. One postcard I returned to often, sent to my grandparents in 1958, showed lower Manhattan. On the back it reads - "Late afternoon sunlight splashes over lower Manhattan skyscrapers as steamer is guided from pier by powerful tugboat." | was hooked! NY would be the first destination when I grew Up!

Saturday nights were rituals of watching endless US cop shows - Starsky and Hutch, Kodak, McCloud, CHIPS, Streets of San Francisco, or Mum's favourite, the rumpled, cigar puffing Columbo! I was an 'America obsessed' teenager!

As a photography student in the eighties, I nurtured this obsession. I discovered the FSA photographers, but also iconic street photographers like Garry Winogrand and Bruce Davidson. As I embarked on my MA in 1986, I knew the time was right to bring my childhood dream to fruition - a photo story in the "Big Apple"! Armed with my Canon AE-1, black and white film, a couple of lenses, and with all my excitement and trepidation wrapped up in one little rug sack, I stepped off a plane at JFK into this new world! I spent my whole visit either in a state of fear, or utter exhilaration. NY was a cacophony of sounds, colours, smells, and distractions. It was gritty, but pulsated energy, it was impoverished, but also opulent. It was exciting but dangerous. Walking through neighbourhoods or just popping around street corners was always unpredictable.

Diary extracts 1986.

1st May. First impressions? OMG! Yellow taxi cabs really are YELLOW! Everything's BIG! Steam is coming up from the street! Train to Fulton Street. The carriage, inside and out, is covered with graffiti. First sight of the New York skyline! It's just like Dad's postcard! Staying in Brooklyn next to the bridge. OMG! The bridge is held up with what looks like rope! So exciting. all these lines. shadows, traffic, noise, pollution, and skyscrapers.

4th May. Brooklyn - derelict warehouses - a ghost town. Subway to Delancey Street. A Jewish market, colourful characters. Snapped people in Essex, Ludlow, and Orchard Street. Signs everywhere, colour, graffiti, mountains of rubbish called garbage*! Massive food signs. Enormous sandwiches! People speak so fast! I cant understand them! Lower Eastside. Abandoned. burnt-out buildings, vacant lots, guys with ghetto blasters on their shoulders.

5 - 6th May. Little Italy, Soho, Chinatown. People yelling, swearing, sirens wailing, dogs barking the everyday racket of the City that Never Sleeps*! Walked through the Bowery. Homelessness.

A young Puerto Rican gave me a toy airplane and wished me a good day. Bus to Harlem. Sat next to a wrinkle faced chap. He asked if I realised the bus was going to Harlem. I thanked him and said

'Yes! I knowl* 125th Street. Tenement blocks - burt out, derelict. People selling stuff, very noisy. lots of blaring music. Men sitting in doorways. Police wrestling a young man with toy gun. Met this guy. A kind gentle face. He introduced himself as Baron Lindsey, manager to Count Basie.

I wonder if he was?

Jacky Chapman 2022