John Bartelstone

I was born in Manhattan in 1956 and have always had had a strong attachment to New York City's past. That must be because of all the stories my grandfather told me about life on the lower east side at the turn of the century. I still tend to see the city through his eyes.

After getting a B.S. in radio and television production at Syracuse University's Newhouse School, I began to work in recording studios in New York. In that industry I went from being a bicycle messenger at a very good recording studio to being the chief engineer of a very bad one. Time for career two. I went back to school and got a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University,which led me to becoming an architect at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. There I worked on infrastructure projects and felt that I had finally found a permanent calling. Well it did last for ten years.

It was at the Port Authority that I began to take photography seriously, having dabbled in it in high school. While still an architect there, I began photographing industrial subjects in New York. That led me to the Navy Yard and a fifteen year exploration. In 1995 I left Architecture to take up photography as my final career. I think.