Nathan Kensinger Photography

Drawbridge, California

July 20, 2011 -

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to over 7 million people and 12 major cities. It is one of the largest urban hubs in the United States. However, its southern end is anchored by a landscape more similar to the Colorado plains, with vast open vistas, rolling hills, and empty dirt roads lined with decaying carcasses. In the middle of this incongruous landscape lies a collection of empty buildings sinking into the mud of an abandoned island. This is Drawbridge, the Silicon Valley ghost town.

Officially given its name in 1887, Drawbridge started as a train stop on Station Island, between bridges over Mud Creek and Coyote Creek. Due to an abundance of fish and birds, it soon became a popular destination for hunters. At its peak, Drawbridge held over 90 structures - hotels, restaurants, cabins, and dozens of rod & gun clubs linked together by narrow boardwalks. Its skies were so full of birds that hunting was sometimes done with a cannon. "Legend has it that five hundred to one thousand ducks would fall out of the sky after one mighty blast," according to an excellent history compiled by the Soft Underbelly of San Jose.

Drawbridge Diagonals

Today, the skies above Station Island are nearly empty and the water nearby is dark red, fouled by algae spawning in abandoned salt harvesting ponds. After its peak in the 1920's and 30's, Drawbridge became a victim of the industrialization and development of the Bay Area. The wetlands around Station Island were parcelled off to salt harvesters while nearby communities like San Jose pumped water out of the area, causing Drawbridge to sink into the mud, and then pumped raw sewage back in, poisoning its waterways, according to Ghost Towns in the USA and Canada. The entire area is "now in the middle of a $400 million effort to restore South Bay wetlands," according to the SF Chronicle, and "the story of Drawbridge is, in many ways, the story of the West."

Station Island is now a part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, "the first urban National Wildlife Refuge established in the United States," according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, including "30,000 acres of open bay, salt pond, salt marsh, mudflat, upland and vernal pool habitats." Drawbridge has been left to collapse, a silent witness of the decline and subsequent restoration of the Bay Area.

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The waterfront of the San Francisco Bay Area has long been a source of inspiration for my photographs of New York City. For more photo essays of the San Francisco Bay, please visit The San Francisco Police Athletic Club (2010) and The San Francisco Naval Shipyard (2009)

The Boardwalk

Red Waters

Floating Ghost House

Ghost House

Where Is Home?

Dead Dog

In The Salt Pond

Water Tower

Boardwalk and Shack

Slough View

In the Window (2008)

Ghost House Diagonals

Shelves and Windows

Track Diagonals

Shotgun Shack (2008)

Backyards (2008)

Ladder

Hills and Prairie (2008)

Train Passing (2008)

Brooklyn's Bridges: Engineering as Art and Inspiration

From June 28th to September 18th, 2011, the Brooklyn Public Library featured my work in a group exhibition titled Brooklyn's Bridges: Engineering as Art and Inspiration. Jay Kaplan, Director of Programs & Exhibitions at the Brooklyn Public Library, wrote of the exhibit: "Brooklyn's bridges have long fascinated artists in a wide range of media. This exhibition brings together the work of 17 visual artists who have chosen to explore these omnipresent and monumental features of our daily lives. Their work reflects a range of responses - among which we can readily detect awe, a sense of mystery, scientific curiosity and simple sensual delight..."

The exhibit included one of my photographs from inside the Domino Sugar Refinery, looking out onto the Williamsburg Bridge. The image - titled "Domino Sugar Refinery" (2007) - is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Public Library, and this was the fourth Brooklyn Library exhibit to include my work. For a list of other exhibits, please visit this page. "Brooklyn's Bridges" was on display in the Grand Lobby of the Central Library, which is located on Grand Army Plaza. For more information, please visit the library's webpage.

Domino Sugar Refinery (2007)

Urban Camping in Staten Island

June 22, 2011 -

Camping in New York City can be a challenge. There is only one campground open to the public inside city limits, and it has just four campsites. In a city of over 8 million people, getting a reservation at Floyd Bennett Airfield's campground can be difficult, and it is often pre-booked for Native American powwows and Gypsy festivals. Recognizing this, the United States Secretary of the Interior announced a plan on June 13th to transform Floyd Bennett from an abandoned municipal airport into "America's largest urban park campground," according to NY1, with up to 600 campsites available sometime in the future.

In the meantime, a variety of other options are occasionally available to urban campers. Several artists have recently created unique camping opportunities, including The Encampment (2007) on Roosevelt Island, and House of Cards (2009), a shanty timeshare inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There are also a handful of private campgrounds inside the city, like Pouch Camp - the Boy Scouts' private 143-acre oasis in Staten Island. For most New Yorkers, however, the best bet for finding a legal campsite inside New York City is winning a lottery to sleep in a park.

The Encampment (2007)

House of Cards (2009)

The Urban Park Rangers' Family Camping program is "one of the better-kept secrets of the city," according to the NY Times, and throughout the summer, New Yorkers can apply to win a camping spot in the Rangers' lottery system. Some of the more popular campouts include nights in Central Park, Prospect Park and Fort Greene Park. However, the program also offers camping opportunities in many lesser-known parks in the five boroughs that make far superior campsites. Camping with the Urban Park Rangers is free, and includes a tent, food and campfire. All that is needed is a sleeping bag.

One of the best camping locations offered in the Urban Park Ranger lottery is at Wolfe's Pond Park, "one of Staten Island's largest parks," which includes a beach, pond, picnic area, forest and mountain biking trails. Although Wolfe's Pond is situated near the far southern end of the city, camping in the park is still a uniquely urban experience. The park itself highlights the harsh contrast between urban and natural. One section of its beach is open for swimming, manned with lifeguards, and is regularly raked free of debris and seaweed. Just down the beach, though, the uncleaned section is littered with syringes and "more tampon applicators than I have ever seen in my life," according to one camper. In Wolfe's Pond itself, fishermen ply waters littered with empty beer cans and 40's.

After dark, when the park is largely emptied out, the Urban Park Rangers lead a night hike through the forest, over bridges and alongside patches of poison ivy, while birds and insects compete with car alarms and a steady stream of nearby traffic. On the deserted beach, waves crash at the edge of an empty lifeguard station as barges and tankers slip by the southern end of Staten Island. The distant glow of fireworks in Coney Island is a reminder that the crowds of the city are just a few miles away. Back at the campground, a campfire in the darkness erases any lingering memories of the city.

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For more information on the Urban Park Rangers' Family Camping program, please visit their website.

Wolfe's Pond

Dark Bridge

Closed Beach

Sand & Syringe

Fire Pit

Wolfe's Pond Sunset

Campground Sunset

Classic A Frame

Night Beach

BBQ Bonfire

Urban Rangers Campfire

2011 Brooklyn Film Festival

The 2011 Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) took place from June 3rd to 12th, 2011 and presented over 100 film premieres from 26 different countries. As the Director of Programming for the festival, I led a team of screeners and programmers to select these films from a field of more then 2,400 submissions coming from over 100 different countries.

While all of the selected films merit equal attention, several had subjects related directly to this website's themes, especially in the documentary category. Locally, Battle For Brooklyn (Best Documentary and Grand Chameleon Award) documented the struggle against the Atlantic Yards development site and the fight against eminent domain abuse in Brooklyn, while Bed Stuy Do Or Die (Audience Award for Documentary) captured the gritty reality of life in Brooklyn, riding along with the Bed Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corp. Outside of Brooklyn, Mann V. Ford focused on one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States, a doubly toxic Superfund site located just a few miles from New York City. Scrapper (Spirit Award for Documentary) was filmed on the fringes of society, in California's Chocolate Mountain bombing range, and presented a story of missile-scavenging, meth-using outlaws living in a militarized post-apocalyptic landscape.

On the fiction side, My Last Day Without You (Best Production Award) was a romantic feature film that made excellent use of locations around the recently superfunded Gowanus Canal, while Money Dog presented a time capsule view of 1980's Bronx dog fighting culture, and Siberia, Monamour (Best New Director Award) told the story of a young boy and his grandfather trapped by wild dogs in a half-abandoned complex at the edge of Russian society.

Additionally, the official trailer and poster for the 2011 festival were shot at S&S Machinery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a location which was featured on this website in 2010. The trailer was directed by Corey Wascinski and produced by Nicholas Weissman, the filmmaking team who created The Minutemen, which won the Grand Jury prize and Best Documentary award at the 2010 Brooklyn Film Festival. Their trailer for BFF 2011 can be viewed online here.

The complete film lineup can be seen at the Brooklyn Film Festival's website.

Battle For Brooklyn

On June 3rd, 2011, the Brooklyn Film Festival presented the United States Premiere of "Battle For Brooklyn" as its opening night film. This screening - called "the perfect combination of movie and event" by the NY Daily News - took place at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, and was followed by an Opening Night Party at the powerHouse Arena in Dumbo.

"Battle For Brooklyn" is a feature-length documentary directed by Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley which tells the story of the controversial Atlantic Yards development site in Brooklyn. Over the course of seven years, it follows Daniel Goldstein, a neighborhood resident whose life is radically transformed by the threat of losing his home to eminent domain. While struggling to keep his property from being seized by private developers, Daniel helps organize his community to fight back against the developers plans, working with the group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. This "amazing grassroots movement," according to the NY Daily News, "came closer than our leaders dare admit to stopping Atlantic Yards."

As the Director of Programming for the Brooklyn Film Festival and as a documentary photographer living in Brooklyn, I've had the privilege of getting to know many of the Brooklynites who battled against the Atlantic Yards. "Battle For Brooklyn," however, is a film that all residents of Brooklyn should be proud of, as it fairly presents the opposing sides of the issue and captures the passion that Brooklynites have for their borough, no matter where they stand on the Atlantic Yards.

The US Premiere of "Battle For Brooklyn" was covered in the NY Post as one of the "Best of B'klyn Fest" films, and in L Magazine in an article about "The Atlantic Yards Odyssey." Additionally, the NY Daily News wrote three articles about the film's premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival, saying of the screening "the timing couldn't be more perfect" and "it would be hard to find a better movie to open this year's Brooklyn Film Festival than "Battle for Brooklyn." The film went on to win both Best Documentary and the grand prize for best film at the Brooklyn Film Festival.

On June 17th, "Battle For Brooklyn" opened in theaters, with excellent reviews from many sources - it was a New York Times Critics' Pick, and received 4 stars from Time Out New York and the New York Daily News. In their review of the film, NPR wrote "this story is pertinent far beyond New York." On November 18th, 2011, "Battle For Brooklyn" was among the 15 documentary films shortlisted for an Oscar from the 84th Academy Awards.

For more information on the film, please visit battleforbrooklyn.com. For more information on the Atlantic Yards - and on some of the Brookly residents who have fought against it - please visit Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report, Lumi Michelle Rolly's No Land Grab and the website of photographer Tracy Collins, who has been documenting the Atlantic Yards project since its inception. Also, several other films have captured aspects of the Atlantic Yards story, including Vicente Ortega's documentary "Freddy's" - which had its World Premiere at the 2010 Brooklyn Film Festival, the Meerkat Media Collective's short documentary "Brooklyn Boondoggle" (2009), "Stadium Status" (2010) by the Internets Celebrities, and "Brooklyn Matters" (2007) by Isabel Hill. In addition, in 2007 several photo essays were published on this website exploring inside the tunnels underneath the Atlantic Yards development site.

Pouch Camp

April 28, 2011 -

There are many strange things in the Blood Root Valley. There is the half-abandoned tuberculosis hospital. There is a 260-foot mountain made by Robert Moses. And there is Pouch Camp, a hidden 143-acre oasis with a 68-year-old lake, mountain ponds, rustic cabins and 55 lean-tos. For over 60 years, Pouch Camp has been a secret haven for New York City's boy scouts. Each year, thousands of scouts learn to swim and camp within the boundaries this vast idyllic refuge. Located in the heart of Staten Island, Pouch Camp is so large it even has its own private island, which is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the camp is situated inside the most populous city in the United States. Located just 10 miles from Wall Street, Pouch Camp has somehow remained largely anonymous. "Few New Yorkers know of it," according to the NY Times, and it is instead "a habitat for deer, owls, snakes, turtles and herons."

In the off season, William H. Pouch Scout Camp is peaceful and largely deserted. Winding trails snake through hills dotted with ponds. Lean-tos sit quietly in the woods, waiting for summer. Small streams flow down from the hills into Ohrbach Lake, the man-made lake at the heart of Pouch Camp. Its beaches are closed, the boats stowed, and park rangers are busy replanting trees and cleaning roads around its edges in preparation for another busy summer season. Aside from the scouts, Pouch Camp also hosts a day camp each summer for boys and girls from around New York City, with fishing, swimming, boating, rock climbing and archery.

Ohrbach Lake

Docked

However, a "black cloud" hangs over the preparations for this summer, and "the future of the property is very much uncertain," according the most recent news from the Staten Island Advance. Back in November 2009, "citing financial stress," the Greater New York Councils of Boy Scouts announced that they planned to market and sell Pouch Camp (PDF document). The boyscouts had been "hit hard by the recession," according to the NY Times, and had lost $5 million in donations. Almost immediately, thousands of Pouch Camp supporters organized in response, according to the Staten Island Advance, amidst fears that the property would be sold to developers. Members of the community have marched on City Hall, organized a website (www.savepouch.com) and have a 6,000+ member facebook group (Save the William H. Pouch Scout Camp). Despite their efforts, the camp may still be closed down and sold off.

For many of Pouch Camp's supporters, the heart of the issue is not just supporting the camp's activities, but trying to preserve a vital link in Staten Island's Greenbelt, a 2,800 acre wilderness that is "New York City’s largest remaining forest preserve," according to the Greenbelt Conservancy. "Even if you don't have any first-hand caring about the Scout program or the habitat for critters there, the economic benefit throughout the world, the country and the region is proven," the president of the Greenbelt Conservancy told the Staten Island Advance. "Something like this just makes your home livable."