The Farmer of New York City
He saw the scene before it even existed
I barely noticed it - or him - there the first time I passed by.
I was in a hurry; didn’t want to be late for the Monday Night Poetry Reading at the KGB Bar (if you get the chance some time - go; it’s a experience). It was also a little chilly to be standing around - early December in New York can have quite a bite to it.
But something caught my eye as I glanced left at an image on the wall of a storefront. I stopped and peered in the window of the 4th Street Photo Gallery. The place was full-to-bursting with photos hung all over the shop. It was like an installation.
I saw him sitting there in the back, watching his TV. I nodded at him, and he back at me. I looked at my watch - I had to get moving (I’d been warned that folks sometimes lined-up for the reading, it was often standing-room-only, and capacity limits still existed in COVID-times), so I moved along.
I got in, and had my first KGB Bar experience. After listening to phenomenal poets - like Craig Morgan Teicher of the New York Times, who was doing his first post-COVID reading - I sort of floated back onto the street lost in thought, and started back in the direction of my hotel.
This time as I glanced right the lights were on in the Gallery, and he was still sitting there. It was 10:30pm. Technically they are closed on Monday nights, and normally they’d shut at 8pm or so even if they were ‘open’. I looked hesitantly through the window, and he motioned me inside. We started chatting.
The gallery space is a work-in-progress, even after ~50 years. He moves photos around, puts new ones up almost every day.
I have been to see him a few times in the last year, and visited with him again one hot, steamy New York evening last week. He was sitting outside, on an old wooden office chair, just taking in the day.
“It drops 20-30 degrees from the heat of the day,” he said to me as I approached. “All these people get out of the city on vacation. Fight traffic to get out of town, and then to get back. I just come on out here for a little vacation of my own”.
He hasn’t taken that much time for himself over the years.
Alex Harsley was born in 1938 in Newport, South Carolina, into a farming family.
It is the farming background that makes him the photographer he is today, he believes.
“Farmers have to look ahead,” he told me during my first visit.
He credits that upbringing with teaching him “how to hunt”. He believes you have to “…see the photo, before it‘s even yet become a scene.”
He opened his photo gallery on 4th Street in New York City almost 50 years ago, in 1973; but has been chronicling the streets and life of the City since the 1950s.
Getting things started wasn’t easy.
When he wanted to start the 4th Street Photo Gallery, after founding the non-profit Minority Photographers, Inc. Two years earlier, he didn’t get much (or quick) support from the area developers (“they laughed me out of the room”) when he picked the location and approached them about it.
Nor was City Hall much help in supporting an African-American man who was self-taught in the Art of Photography. Still, he aimed to get his non-profit off the ground to bolster the presence and work of minority photographers.
In a city where the phrase “you can’t fight City Hall” was coined (Brooklyn, circa 1930), he decided not to fight them. Instead, he outlasted them. He was the original ‘survivor’ before it became a reality TV thing.
When he first showed up to meet the staffer in City Hall to ask for support to start the non-profit, and much the same way as the folks he approached about the gallery space laughed at him - so did this functionary. Wrong move.
He decided he’d show up every day, and patiently wait until they (~3+ weeks later), gave in, and asked how they could help (get him to leave, or get his non-profit moving - the intention not yet clear!).
Over the intervening 50 years, he has helped, nurtured, supported and mentored photographers - too numerous to count.
“How many days are there in some fifty years...each day came a new need with aspirations and I was there to direct them into the right directions and carefully nurtured them over the years,” he said.
And along the way he has amassed a body of work that documents the changing life and times of this iconic city.
As I flipped through a couple of his many display boxes last week, one would catch my eye and I’d pull it out and ask him about it. Invariably, he could name the year and location. More amazing, still, he could always give context about the angle, what drew him to it, and how he saw that scene before it became one.
He has that ability, he says non-chalantly; he has always been able to see a changing scene before it happens - like the advent of digital photography.
Because he’s a farmer at heart, and they have to look ahead.
Over the years he’s gone from Kodak to an iPhone.
With all that mentorship through his Minority Photographers, Inc., he didn’t have a lot of time to focus on his own life, or work.
He lived just a couple of blocks away from his Lower East Side Gallery, but sometimes it may as well have been across town.
“Raising two kids, working until 2am, was hard. I’d get home from the Gallery and my wife would hand them over. I’d walk the neighbourhood with one of those (makes hand motion for baby sling) things to get them to sleep.”
He’s turned his focus to his own work more recently, and is now archiving a lot of it.
“Most people don’t get the chance to do that,” he said, and counts himself very lucky in that way.
And the process is still teaching him.
“I get to see it, my previous work, and learn from it.”
One of the things he’s always been drawn to is cyclists - the very definition of people speeding through an ever-changing scene.
But the cyclists, the riders - amid all the blur and scenery, he can see them.
He spent a lot of time in the 1960s-80s photographing them. He photographed the 6-day bicycle race at Madison Square Garden in 1959, and many other events.
He has some amazing photos from that time. Displayed just above his head last week was a photo of a man cycling, in front of the gallery in the 1970s. While the background is a blur - the cyclist is perfectly captured, away on his errands.
I told him I became a cyclist a few years ago, and have gone on some epic rides.
“Keep riding,” he told me, about a sport he loves.
As I left the gallery, I thought to myself that there can’t be many other folks - if any - like him in the City. People who’ve seen it develop, and had the time and inclination to capture it so closely.
It’s like he’s the curator of the evolution of New York’s visual identity since the 1950s.
I thought about two things as I waved goodbye to him last week.
First - I know I’ll be back, for as long as he’s there, and willing to have a conversation. And I’ll support his art and work by exploring it and buying it each time I go (and you can, too, here).
Secondly - there’s a lot to see in New York City, and many iconic #instagram moments people want to capture of their own “scenes”. But for what it’s worth, I can’t think of many places you can go to experience the real New York, and to take home a unique, one-of-a-kind souvenir that he’ll tell you the story of as you buy it, that will outlast the snowglobe, the Yankees hat, the Times Square kitsch or the Broadway programme.
I guarantee you none of those will be worth 1000 words.
——-
A few notes:
Alex has an instagram account, which you can follow here.
As a non-profit, the 4th Street Gallery doesn’t always make ends meet. In fact, he has to crowd-fund and worry about the bills mid-month these days. As above, this link is to a crowdfunding campaign - I urge you to consider donating to support the work of the many #BIPOC artists and photographers he works with.
There have been plenty of stories written about Alex - you can find a few recent ones here:
Here’s one from ArtNet about his 2021 exhibition at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.
Al Jazeera called him New York’s last iconoclast in 2019.
And, this Indypendent piece in 2019.
A great read Paul, as were the other articles you suggested. Thanks for introducing us to Alex.
Great piece Paul. As I read about you and Arnold, I thought about your skills as witnessed during your time in the Premier’s Office. “We” could use your thinking and leadership in many different societal roles. Is it time for political office?