West Seventy-something

A group of images from one group of streets in one neighborhood in one part of Manhattan.

This neighborhood seems to have been created in black and white:  black asphalt, white sidewalks, dark and light.  The cacophony of shapes, heights, colors, forms, people, traffic and constant, endless activity border on the overwhelming, so the eye simplifies things into simpler contrasts of dark and light.  

What is particularly striking?  What do we see without really noticing?  Grand buildings, monumental spires, brownstones, fire escapes, walls of bricks with windows, Virtually all of these images were created with a large format camera.  No camera is really large enough to capture the scale of these urban landscapes, but bigger seems somehow better. 

Humans relative to buildings.  The buildings rise far above, even in this neighborhood that was largely constructed over a century ago.  The structures both create and contain movement, like the banks of a stream.  Cars, trucks, bikes, scooters, people walking, talking, drinking, smoking, waiting for the bus, a man running with a drill in his hand, all paused by the camera’s shutter for a tiny interval that becomes the past the moment it occurs. 

Astonishingly, serenity intrudes.  A pedestrian unfolds his portable stool to rest in the middle of the sidewalk.  A woman with headphones holds out her phone in an almost supplicant gesture.  A man smokes a cigar outside a bar.  Two friends talk over beers.   Someone waits for the light to change. 

And everywhere, that New York City kind of casual diversity.  Two Jewish men speaking with a woman walking her dog.  Angelo’s Shoe Repair.  The San Remo.  Mallachy’s Pub.  The Dorilton. 

Most of these unmistakably urban images were taken from the street, but this is not street photography.  The built environment creates paths like trees in a park.  The park, the street, they have so much in common.

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