It’s loud, or rather, it was always loud. It was a haven for those in the world of print, a rite of passage. It was the House of Portfolios NYC, Inc.
I was too late.
My timing has never been great. It has always seemed to allude me. In music school, of which I spent 8 years studying and then some, taught me that keeping time in a measured manner was paramount. For me, the sound of silence excited or held anticipation for the next passage. Solos that floated through my clarinets seemed to bend time over accompanying piano, or orchestra, but playing together as a body at times felt constricting. Holding on a little longer here, or shortening a note there felt natural in an environment that begged to play together more so than individualistically. Committing to the sounds of New York and photography were no different.
Through my studies in a printing apprenticeship with Chuck Bogana at ColorOne Inc., I found my way to the Mecca of portfolios, the world that Dave had built, The House of Portfolios. A portfolio is a solo thing. It is the culmination of craft, art, desire, vision, dream and struggle. My first time in what had felt like a forbidden world, was pure magic. Steven Meisel, steps away from me, was talking with Dave and Victor over a book print, deep in creative conversation.
I was hooked.
The hum of the machines, the punching press, the smell of glue everywhere, I wanted it. I had walked in with my Father’s old portfolio book from the 70s with multi-clasp metal binding, wondering if they still had inserts to add. The sales gal pulled them fresh off the wall and they fit hand in glove. I was 2015 and in an instant there was new life in a portfolio some 40 years old. I didn’t meet Dave that day, but I knew it would be an inevitability.
Over 5 years I had two portfolio books made along with their travel cases, one a traditional black, and the other a rare red that’s been marred with the hands of many an art director to create a scratched patina that only a leather enthusiast could truly adore. KARJAKA pressed in to the right corner, they bring me pride every time I saw them opened. And then the silence started creeping in more and more over the years before covid.
Over the past decade I’ve worked with a variety of print editors through various roads, but all leading back to House of Portfolios for the insert into their masterpieces. And then, more and more, the iPad became the portfolio of choice. The youngins coming out of Parsons, SVA and FIT no longer running to a physical, but the digital, and the digital became deafening for Dave and Victor. We seemed to chat about it more and more, like all of the print world began do to, just as I had arrived on the scene. A little late with silence growing louder.
Over the years the shop started to shrink. Rising costs for rent, fewer fabrications, less desire and more assembly from the world of China and Amazon. The writing was no longer on the portfolio covers, but on the wall. And then the big bang, the machines stopped and so did the world.
That August leading up to it all, Dave had me come in and take photos of the spot for advertising and social media. The giant had to finally commit to social media and advertising after decades of practically doing nothing but high quality bespoke work, in a world fueled by word of mouth advertising and excellence. It was time to pivot, but ultimately too late.
Dave shared with me his love of fashion and design, having gone to design school, however unable to draw, never got his shot at fashion. Instead, he build a shrine to the photography world. A world that if you were to make it in, you had to stop through the portico of portfolios on 25th street between 5th and 6th in Manhattan. At last during covid, the machines had stopped and we chatted on the phone briefly for a moment during that time, looking for some sort of way to advertise on google, but the damage was done. Packed up in some storage facility or likely sold off, the remnants of a bygone area laid waste by the march of technology and time. But to those who hold dear the portfolios of the past, we can still hear the hum, the smell, the exhaustion of the crew that helped build an entire industry recorded in leather bound time.
