Bustling Chinatown in New York during the Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Street Fair on Sunday, June 10, 2012. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos069819
Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a theme for our blog, and sometimes a theme just arises out of the blue. It’s funny but at the moment when the shutter clicked on this photo the thought of masks as a blog theme immediately came to mind. This kid could well have stepped out of a Diane Arbus or a Weegee photo….. that is if either of them had shot color and digital.
Environmental activists protest the state of the planet on Wall Street in New York in April 1990. FRANCES M. ROBERTS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos060674
We didn’t realize until now that we have so many photos of masked people. In this case a good old-fashioned gas mask, circa the cold war period, serves as a prop for protesting against the alleged defiling of the environment by corporate interests. Sounds like BP or any number of contemporary events. However, this one is from 1990 so things never seem to change.
Broadway theatergoers leave Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theater during a downpour on July 23, 2004. Andrew Lloyd Weber has announced plans to open a version of the blockbuster musical in Las Vegas costing $35 million. FRANCES M. ROBERTS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: showcasepix286734
This is a famous mask. It’s been lighting up various marquees on Broadway for 25 years and is the longest running musical on Broadway.
Dancers perform in the Cinco de Mayo Parade in New York on, Sunday, May 9, 2010. The holiday commemorates a victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguon over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. In the United States Mexican-Americans celebrate with parades and festivals as a show of ethnic pride. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos053690
From Broadway musicals to Cinco de Mayo. Every year Central Park West fills with music and dancing at the Cinco de Mayo parade and every year Mexican folk dancers in masks, costumes and carrying faux rifles dance down the street in a musical reenactment of the Battle of Puebla in 1862 where the Mexican forces were victorious over the French. Another musical like Phantom of the Opera.
Members of multiple organizations rally in front of JPMorgan Chase headquarters on Park Avenue in New York on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 to call for the reinstitution of a global “Robin Hood Tax”, a tax on trades in stocks, bonds, currency and derivatives. Also known as a Financial Speculation Tax, the tax would be low, between 0.05% and 0.005% but would raise billions of dollars, sorely needed by the economy’s of countries that institute it. The money would go towards jobs,health care, housing, etc. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos069987
Finally, we’ve just come back from photographing the masked protesters of Sherwood Forest outside of JPMorgan Chase headquarters. The demonstrators donned masks and jaunty medieval England type hats to protest for a “Robin Hood Tax” (aka a Financial Speculation Tax or a Financial Transaction Tax). The analogy of Robin Hood might not be the best since he stole from the rich to give to the poor….. this is more like taxing the rich and giving to the poor, or at least raising cash for public services.
Richard Levine and Frances Roberts, of Levine Roberts Photography, are a husband and wife team of photographers covering politics, environmental issues, the economy, business, and social and cultural issues in the Big Apple. See more photos from their collection on Newscom.
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Tags: levine roberts photography, masks, new york city, the big apple