Settings: ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/100 sec, 50mm lens

Well this is cool.  I took this photo on the way to Trader Joe’s yesterday.  I was walking through Tompkins Square Park and saw this man playing away on his sax.  I was super drawn to him – as I often am to photographing old people.  Just look at him – his face told such a story to me… his eyes, so sad and expressive… the deep wrinkles in his forehead, his knobby fingers, his wooly beard.  I figured he was just your average homeless guy who knows how to play a little sax.  I gave him a dollar in exchange for a couple photos.  When I was done, he wrote down his name for me – Giuseppi Logan – and told me to look him up online.

I just did that and boy… I found quite a story!  Turns out, he was a very talented and important avant-garde jazz musician in the sixties here in New York.  He was trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and he even recorded a few albums.  It seems he was somewhat mentally ill and heavily into drugs and in the seventies, he totally disappeared for decades – everyone thought he was dead.  He was rediscovered again playing around Tompkins Square park in 2008. Here is a youtube video of him playing last year:

Here is another link, which tells more of the sad story.  I’m totally fascinated now.