Neighborhood Photographer Captures A Love Affair With Urban Life
Jonas Read has quickly grabbed everyone’s attention on the local Facebook pages. His ecstatic photographs — which feature scenes from Coney Island Avenue and the F train platform — will make you rethink the neighborhood entirely.
Read never trained as a photographer. He stumbled into it almost by accident, perhaps because of his artist parents, photographer friends, and carpentry training. “I’m fanatical about plumb and level and frame and center,” he said, a skill that he traces back to carpentry.
He started photography armed with just an iPhone 4, Instagram, and a morning commute beginning at the McDonald Avenue F train, which is still one of his favorite places to photograph. “The light that comes into the tracks anytime of day can be completely different, and there’s always an interesting looking person walking around. It’s a magical place,” he said.
“I love it. Brilliant.”
Read’s perspective is colored by a sense of veracity and fearlessness — as a local photographer, a musician, a traveler, and a New Yorker.
He’s lived in many different places — London, Dublin, Galway, Amsterdam, and traveled all over the world. “I’m from a tiny village in southern England, so I got that out of my system. Now I couldn’t live anywhere else but New York.”
His images tell his intimate love story with this city, and this neighborhood. “I love the crappy bits, which most people wouldn’t look at. I still think it’s cool.”
Read’s New York origin story is the very definition of cool. He came here to play at CBGBs with his then-band Big Geraniums in 1995. He met his future wife at that East Village gig after she yelled out to him from the crowd, and he never left.
He lived off his music for seven years before diving into a kind of carpentry unique to NYC. By day, Read now renovates homes for wealthy — “insane rich, embarrassingly rich” New Yorkers. But not surprisingly, he loves that work, too. “I’m happy with what I do and I live in a nice place.”
Even during our chat at Bar Chord, I could feel Read’s infectious excitement that spreads through his various careers, his neighborhood, and now this growing hobby.
“When they were renovating Ditmas Avenue last year, I had to walk down to 18th — I got some brilliant perspective shots of it and people are mad for them.”
Read and his wife moved to Kensington eight years ago from Williamsburg, when rent hikes drove them out of northern Brooklyn. “When I first came to Kensington, I was struck just by the visual splendor of the ethnic hats worn by everyone in the neighborhood — the variety and subtlety.”
Read has since graduated to a Panasonic with a 30x zoom. He goes out to shoot in the early mornings when there aren’t many people around. “I don’t want to be noticed,” he said.
“A lot of what attracts me is color, especially 1950s postcard colors,” he said, which he plays with through editor software and apps.
“I fuck around with photos shamelessly, I have a lot of purist friends who don’t agree. But I really admire William Eggleston; he would only take one picture of something. I try to take one or maybe two, and fix them.”
“I’m still learning what I like, and what makes a good photo,” he said. But Read clearly has an innate understanding of color, structure and relationships — whether between objects or people.
Now, he always looks for inspiration. “I love walking around, which is what’s lovely about New York. I was doing that anyway, and now I’ve got a camera to take pictures with. I pay attention.”
Read shoots all over Brooklyn and NYC. Check out his portfolio on Squarespace, and the series of gorgeous abstract painted versions of his photographs by local artist Heather Keton.
All photos by Jonas Read unless otherwise mentioned.
