Greenwich Village Halloween Parade
New York City
2004


I don't consider myself an expert in night photography, but on Halloween we all get to wear masks. In 2004 a friend invited me to join a few companions from past workshops at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York to photograph the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

There are more parade permits issued in the five boroughs of New York City than there are days in the year. Some are big spectacles like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the St. Patrick's Day Parade, or the Puerto Rican Day Parade, but most are small events, like the parade for immigrants from the Italian fishing town of Mola di Bari and their descendants in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The Greenwich Village Halloween parade is one of the most eclectic, attracting kids in their costumes, political activists, drag queens, and world-class puppeteers. Participants don't need to register or pay a fee--just show up in costume.

Many photographers come to document the event, and for the past few years Steve Anchell has run a workshop at the parade through ICP with sponsorship from Leica, and we did meet participants from the workshop with Leicas, both digital and film, in hand. There is much to photograph, beginning with the preparations at the staging area, the parade itself, and the less organized revelry afterward that continues until morning, and the participants are eager to pose for the camera.

Since a mask provides a chance to play at being someone other than yourself, I thought I'd take the opportunity to photograph in a style I thought I didn't even like. I shoot medium and large format for its ability to render fine detail, texture and rich tonal gradations, but this night I was going for the Weegee look. I re-read Arthur Fellig's classic Naked City, paying special attention to his chapter, "Camera Tips" at the end. I wasn't going to be able to imitate Weegee's technique exactly without flashbulbs and that big reflecting pan he used or the old photojournalist's standby film--Kodak Super Panchro Press B--and I know he would have considered my German camera unpatriotic in the days after WWII, when he used strictly U.S.-made equipment like the Graflex Speed Graphic and the B&J press camera. But using what I had and was familiar with, maybe I could make the sensationalist reporter's style my own for the night.

I went out with my handheld Linhof Technika V 4x5" camera on a strap around my neck and a Schneider 210mm Symmar convertible cammed for the rangefinder. Weegee would have used a shorter lens, but in those days a big camera could get you across police lines, and the invitation came too late for me to arrange for a pass to be on the other side of the barrier during the parade. One of the photojournalists at the parade smiled and said, "That's the real deal! I used one of those years ago in photo school." I did see one other photographer using a 4x5" view camera at the parade, but on a tripod with portable lighting on stands and assistants--not press-camera style. For the hard lighting I used a barebulb strobe with a plain 5-inch reflector mounted on a simple bracket over the lens axis, powered by a 200 Watt-second battery pack. The Technika has a revolving back, so the camera and flash always stay in the same orientation for horizontals and verticals. I brought four Grafmatic filmholders for the night, each loaded with six sheets of Efke PL100, which I developed in Acufine for extra speed. I worked out of a shoulder bag that held the Grafmatics and the flash pack. Efke PL100 has a classic tonality not unlike Super Panchro Press B, and in Acufine it would be the same speed as Weegee's film. I set the strobe on auto so I could leave the lens on f:8 for most of the night, except for the crowd shot at "Le Pescadou," which was taken from across a wide boulevard with the lens wide open at f:5.6. I set the shutter on a slow 1/15 sec. to capture a little motion and convey the activity of the parade.

By the end of the night I was liking the mask, and when I souped and proofed the negatives, I began to appreciate the work of Arthur Fellig in a new way. The negatives had a muscular line and sharp look that enlarged beautifully. Despite the hard lighting, the fine tonal gradation of the large format negative that I hadn't seen in the old newspaper reproductions in Naked City, was still present in the prints. That big strobe revealed details I wasn't even conscious of as I was photographing. At night you can't see everything that the flash sees, but if you trust your intuition, sometimes the Ouija board points the lens in the right direction.

Photographs and text copyright (c) 2007 by David A. Goldfarb