Losing a piece of New York
RIP friend and photographer Ken Stein
A typical New Year post would revolve around reflections of the previous year or aspirations for the year ahead, but not this time. Over the break we got word that a cherished friend and colleague passed away, and I wanted to start off 2024 by paying tribute to him.
If you worked with me at The Brick or Piper McKenzie from around 2003-2013, you almost certainly encountered Ken Stein. He was our go-to photographer for many years, capturing images of dozens of shows and social events and even snapping headshots for actor friends
Ken was an amazing performance photographer, but his real gift was street photography. No one knew New York like Ken. He grew up in the Bronx, and spent most of his adulthood living in Brooklyn and working as an NYC public high-school social-studies teacher - a job he retired from in 2021. Ken didn’t capture New Yorkers as if he was bagging some sort of exotic fauna. He took photos as a neighbor, a highly talented recorder of the moments that make up an album of the city’s life.
Over decades of observation and involvement, he produced thousands of images of people walking, working, eating, waiting, protesting, performing, sleeping, standing, and just living their lives. For the most part, these aren’t images of extremes, but glimpses within the cracks - the daily stuff we’d have long forgotten if someone hadn’t immortalized it. His images regularly turned up on sites like Gothamist, recording the quieter side of the city’s evolution from his ‘70s youth until just last month. As he told Gothamist back in 2016:
The city was different back then. I think it was quieter, the street lights were darker, there was more room to walk and more places to wander—often everything seemed new and the different areas of the city were just that; different… Taking pictures was always thrilling and I loved the way it made me feel. It felt at times I was the only one taking pictures—I think that's why people let me take their photos. It was a rare occurrence and I was bold as fuck back then.
Though he took my picture plenty of times on stage, my favorite occasion was on the street side of things. In 2011, we were visiting Rockaway with baby Dash when we ran into Ken on the boardwalk. I might not have remembered this, except that he pinged me a couple years back to let me know he was going to remove some pictures from Facebook but wanted to make sure I had this saved.
Because of course, underlying everything else was the fact that Ken was a world-class mensch. After spending all week doing one of the hardest jobs on earth, he would swing by our rehearsals to immortalize our strutting and fretting with the enthusiasm of a rookie, making us feel like Broadway stars, and joining us afterwards for beers. He was generally quiet at those gatherings, still more an observer than a participant, but spending a few minutes talking to him revealed his incisive skepticism and absurd sense of humor. Very little escaped him, whether through the lens or otherwise.
As with so many people from my pre-pandemic theater days, I couldn’t quite pinpoint the last time I saw Ken. Probably ran into him somewhere on the subway or at a friend’s gathering and thought nothing of it. Then the pandemic intervened, restricting us for a while from that sort of random run-in. We emailed or messaged each other occasionally, but the years drifted by, and now he’s gone. Just like the moments in time he recorded, the photos remain as memories.
I’ll leave you with a small, frankly arbitrary collection of a few favorites among Ken’s astonishing output. They’re all gathered at his Flickr page, along with thousands more. It’s a great place to visit whenever you need a reminder of what New York is, was, and - though now diminished by his loss - can hopefully continue to be.
Here are a few more from our shows:
And here are some from over the years, posted to his Flickr:
Nice rememberance
I’m so sorry to hear this, and even sorrier that I didn’t know until now. Ken was a teaching colleague, Flickr friend and photographed my wedding. He was responsible for getting me and husband together!