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Steve Eccles has long had a passion for photography and art but as a young man from Hull, he was told to get a proper job and this lead to a successful career in engineering and the aerospace industry. He acquired his first camera at fifteen the first of many, and has since won several photography competitions. Throughout the last forty years he has studied fine art and photography becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2009. Eventually in a second career opening two very successful art galleries with his wife, in York and Beverley, showing fine art and photography. During their extensive travels around the World Steve, camera always in hand has continued to photograph people and places that have inspired him. Steve is currently working on his next book project The Face of Jazz to be published in the early part of 2019
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The Face of New York By Steven Thomas Eccles
Photo: By Sheana Hollowood
E F AC NE OF E W Y OR K
The Five Boroughs of New York In 2017 we travelled to New York for an extended stay. After visiting this amasing city every year for some twenty years on business, it became apparent that there were big changes occuring both in the makeup of the people but also in the layout of the city. The old village areas of Soho, Greenwhich and Chelsea are becomiing like everwhere else. losing their individual shops, eateries and quaintness in favour of expensive apartments and franchise outlets. So before they disappear altogether it was Steve;s ambition to travel through the five boroughs more leisurely and to meet the people of this great metropolis, to talk with the locals and to photograph them at their places of work, play and in their native habitat. The five boroughs comprise Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. Independently each of these boroughs could have been an entire city in its own right up until 1898. Today of course this is not the case. Brooklyn is no longer the poor neighbour to Manhattan, Williamsburgh is the new hipster hangout. Bushwick,which leads on to Queens is fast becoming the next affordable place to move in to. In the other direction going from Manhattan up to the newly gentrified Harlem, you must travel through the Upper East and West Sides with the fabulous mansions of the super rich and of course the wonderful Central Park. Then onwards to the Bronx. All these journeys were undertaken on public transport and mostly on foot, walking at least ten miles a day. This is by far the best way to meet and talk to the people and most of them feature in this book. From the homeless and down and outs to the drug addicts and those reformed. To the artists, artisans, shopkeepers to shopworkers. To the law enforcers and breakers, the old and the young and the the ones who would never need to be any of the above. It was a fascinating and enjoyable collaboration. Most of the hugely diverse people were warm and friendly, with interesting back stories that we will never forget. It only proved to enhance our view of this incredible city and our understanding of what makes it unique.
Sheana Hollowood