Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Land's End, Sands Point.

A collection of photographs from Land's End, the doomed estate in Sands Point, NY that is said to have been the inspiration for Tom and Daisy's home in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.Several more (my favs) are in my website gallery here. 

For more info on this historic property please visit Zach's awesome site and HERE

"I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited - they went there."

"Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."



Land's End, Sands Point.

Land's End, Sands Point.


Main Entrance, Land's End, Sands Point.


fixtures in pink onyx


"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." (I found these things outside the seafacing entrance - as you see them.)

"




"He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was."
Unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are walleyed.
D.H. Lawrence

Library at Land's End, Sands Point.

detail in library shelf
Library at Land's End, Sands Point.


Staircase at Land's End, Sands Point.


portrait by stairs
Land's End, Sands Point.

sea facing entrance opens into library through split barn door as seen in gallery on my website www.jenrossphoto.com
Front entrance and infamous porch at Land's End, Sands Point.
Cuvee Dom Perignon vintage 1962, transistor radio found in kitchen.




portrait of the photographer :) on banister



"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."




Thank you Anand Chetna for going through the quotes with me, and to my father for igniting the imagination and blurring the time space continuum using literary quotes for all these years.

contact: jross@jenrossphoto.com
 
Prints available, please contact Jen Ross for information.

©Jen Ross Photography 2011. All rights reserved

Haji Ali, Mumbai, India.

January, 2011 Haji Ali on a Saturday afternoon.

I was particularly struck by this little girl who did not move but quietly observed me, staring straight into the lens for the two or three minutes that I shot portraits of her.
child begging.

Sunset near Mahalaxmi temple.
Man working near leper wheelchairs.  The lepers are out on the walkway begging.


Men working at food stand near entrance to Haji Ali.



Detail of wall and flier near entrance.


Inside Haji Ali


Beggar child, sepia.




Jen Ross photography 2011 All rights reserved