The View Through the Porthole

A full-time harbor-dwelling photographer explores the craziness of life at sea level.

What you’re looking at is something most people never see: the view from inside a ship at a containerport and, more broadly, a glimpse into what is really happening on NYC’s waterfront.  Along New York’s sprawling rivers and harbors there has been a lot of looking, but not enough seeing; I thank a college art professor for teaching me the difference between the two.

A ship sets sails soon after dawn while a pile of line sits on the deck, waiting for a tug to pick it up

I speak as a journalist who left the biz because I couldn’t get the real harbor story told in the conventional press, and so I set out to find other ways. For the past five years, I’ve been doing just that, from a home and office aboard the retired oil tanker Mary A. Whalen, the base of operations for a harbor-revitalization non-profit I founded called PortSide NewYork. Our goal is to inspire and create better use of NYC’s water space.