Fifth Avenue
Category: Architecture
Pillaried
San Diego Joy
First day or two in San Diego and I shot, somewhat at random, at tourist sites, and anything else that caught my eye. Not very studied photography.
Back-Up
As part of my project on the gentrification of my old neighborhood (upper Yorkville and lower East Harlem) I was visiting sites from my childhood. I didn’t remember this structure and asked some men who were hanging out near here on a bench about it. They told me it was one of a handful of backup generators that had been installed since Hurricane Sandy for the surrounding public housing apartment complex.
Houses
Who says New York is all high-rise apartment blocks?
Let Me Out of Here!
Bas reliefs on either side of the door of what looks like a luxury apartment building that must have been renovated in an old stable or carriage house.
Crossed Lines
New Wing
I’ve probably posted pictures of this new wing of the American Museum of Natural History before. It actually opened while I was living abroad and I haven’t been in yet. Is it just me, or does every new museum building have a requirement to emulate Frank Gehry’s Bilbao swoopy, rounded look?
Urban Exoticism
I had a cousin who was an optician. He offered me an after-school job at his shop. He told me he’d teach me how to work the lens-grinding machine but to be careful lest I fall in and make a spectacle of myself.
Some more urban night shots from the archive.
Click on the images below to see them larger.
Urban Exoticism
Some more of the 70+ images that didn’t make the grade for submitting to Urban Exoticism.
Click any image below to see them all larger.
Urban Exoticism
I continue with samples of images I rejected from my Urban Exoticism contest submission.
Click on any of the images below to see them full-sized.
Plaza
Is this a liminal space? It appears to be a public sculpture plaza in a fancy building on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. But it’s empty and devoid of people. It’s the space between the street and the Lever offices. It’s attractive but looks rather forlorn and abandoned.
Rock Garden with Rat Traps
Since I’ve started consciously collecting images of liminal space (see my series, Neither Here nor There), I see them everywhere I turn.
The Two Towers
with apologies to Tolkien
Found Art, Coiled
Taking the Gardens Away
Another soapbox issue of mine – the Upper West Side Urban Renewal Project – a plan first mooted in the late 1950s to “clear slums” and redevelop the area. Developers were given mighty concessions to bulldoze people’s homes and rebuild, while making few concessions of their own. One of those was the provision of public garden spaces. In my neighborhood this was most often met with an open expanse of cement holding a withered sapling in a concrete box, or something a tad nicer, surrounded by a fence to keep out people from the neighborhood. With the expiration of these requirements after a period of about 20 years, building owners rushed to build retail space on the sites of these barren “gardens” (increased revenue), topping them with private parks open only to the residents of their buildings. So now we must look up to see our crown of thorns.
Gallery Space
Home Sense
Brighton Pleasure Palace?
Election Day, USA – Go vote, if you haven’t already!
Contrasting the democratic power of the vote (today’s election day in the US) with royal autocracy, here are a couple of snaps of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion.
The Waggon and Horses
