Vines--why bother?

I really want to get good pictures of the grapevine in my neighborhood. I grew up in a city of the American Southwest, and the only grapes were small wild, ones with intricate leaves, grey on the underside. There were a number of home winemakers on my father's side, but all using their family orange groves rather than grapes.

The first vineyard I ever saw was in Southern France, out the window of the 15th century stone house I was spending the summer in, learning French on scholarship. I lived out in the country, and the hallway on one side of the house had an idyllic view of vineyards, cherry orchards, and wheat fields sprinkled with red poppies. Stones walls ran between them, some as old as the Romans.

Nine years later, I saw urban grapes. I went to the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, for the first time. I was horrified by Brooklyn driving in because it was seemed devoid of non-human life. Only man-made things met the eye. It was late spring and I simply could not imagine how so many people could live there. But then I did--I discovered the tiny backyard gardens, where Italian immigrants had planted grape arbors a hundred years before. Chartreuse grape leaves were boiling over the top of privacy fences, and hardly anything is more beautiful than grape vines in late spring.

So the grape vines near my house are always a pleasant jolt--what are they doing in this Midwestern town? Thinking about this has clarified for me what I want the photos to capture: the peculiar setting of bricks and fence, where the grapes do reasonably well in a place that seems so less welcoming to them than anywhere I've seen them before.