For the last two years, I’ve been living in an apartment on the northern end of 4th avenue in Brooklyn. Upon moving in, I was immediately impressed with how remarkably raw and harsh the street is. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s a 7 mile or so strip of boulevard that runs from Downtown Brooklyn to Bay Ridge. The vehicles using it as a north-south thoroughfare speed down the treeless blocks at around 60 mph. It’s an excellent place to get a new tire, some fast food, gasoline or the phone number off a billboard advertising $399 divorces.

Ironically, due to some changes in the zoning rules, a slew of new luxury condo developments are going up along the Ave. Maybe there’s something in the soil, because the new buildings are just as blatantly unwelcoming as their surroundings. Despite the street’s inhospitable nature though, there is something magnificent about the structures that have been built there, both old and new. 4th Ave isn’t like any other part of the city I’ve experienced. I photographed these structures in a manner that isolates them from their chaotic surroundings in order to reveal their character, both as individual buildings, and collectively as a landscape.