When I was just starting my career, a senior colleague at a daily newspaper on the NJ Shore where I was a freelancer, made it a point to explain to me that, “There are no new pictures, just old pictures done in a new way…” I never forgot that morsel of guidance, so when an opportunity came around for me to make a familiar image again that I’d already made a few years earlier, his statement rung like a bell in my head. Last week I photographed a toddler here in my Newburgh, NY neighborhood to help illustrate a brief two-day heat wave that blanketed the Northeast. When the child began dumping the plastic water bucket over his head a few times (below) while I squatted nearby, I couldn’t help but think of the image (at bottom) made in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa back in 2006. It’s easily become one of my favorite travel related images… ~cg
A two-year old boy keeps cool in a sidewalk kiddie pool in Newburgh, NY on Thursday, June 21, 2012. The second day of a heatwave stalled over the Northeast and the Hudson Valley, sending temperatures into the 90’s with high humidity. CHET GORDON/Times Herald-Record
Azman Bakari (32) cools off with water from a fresh water well in the Old Town neighborhood of Mombasa, Kenya on Tuesday, May 23, 2006. The fresh water well built in 1570 AD, filters sea water from the Indian Ocean through rock coral and sunlight, providing Old town residents a place to do laundry and cool off. © www.chetgordon.com
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