Scowling Towards Me & Inside Looking out

¡COMANDANTE BIGGIE!, 2014, Bernardo Vanterpool

The photograph above was taken on March 13, 2014 at three o’clock in the afternoon. I had just gotten off Lafayette St. on a Queens bound, local C train when I took this photograph on Fulton St. and S. Portland St. in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York. As I walked up the stairs and out of the subway, I spotted this magnificent mural painted on a four story red brick apartment building. I started to scrutinize the mural and its surroundings, snapped a photograph and decided this photograph will be part of my descriptive essay. This is a mural of a Brooklyn rapper by the name of Biggie Smalls, who was shot dead in the year 1997. I titled this photograph “Fantasy on a Wall” because the mural portrays the rapper as an army militant. The phrase below the mural reads “¡COMANDANTE BIGGIE!” The translation of this phrase from Spanish to English is “Commander Biggie!”

Theodore Roosevelt United States Courthouse, 2014, Bernardo Vanterpool

This is a photograph of the Theodore Roosevelt Courthouse located at 225 Cadman plaza, Brooklyn, New York. I took this photograph from the men’s bathroom on the seventh floor of the New York City College of Technology. When I stepped inside the bathroom, it felt like I walked right into a three hundred degree oven. I quickly jogged about fifteen feet over to the windows when I saw this enthralling view. Before anything I noticed the courthouse and its amazing height. The courthouse is 22-stories high. There are two other eye captivating buildings. On the left edge of the photograph a section of the seven floor Pearl Building is shown. The right edge captures a fifteen story, brick apartment building along Tillary st. On the ground floor of the apartment building retail stores are located. There are cars stopped at a red light and if you look closely a person with a withe shirt is crossing the street.