Part Of

Eye glasses… Russ’ image of the eye glasses struck me, because despite the fact that everyone else in my family, all of them, on both sides, needs corrective lenses to see, I don’t.  Perhaps it’s because I see for a living?  Who knows?

A friend of mine once told me, tongue-in-cheek, that what he loves most about America is freedom of choice: Coke or Pepsi.  The recent string of preceding images are all about choice.  I was struck by Russ’ comment that “we, as Americans, have so many choices.”  He also mentioned photographing the homeless, and it seems to me that they, also Americans, have very few choices. And then we shift to Costco, a retail paradise,  and return to choices aplenty once again.  Russ also alluded to the weather, which is a huge story on the evening news the past couple of days.  And now my head is spinning. I have a choice:  I could play an image of the homeless, but I choose not to dwell on the sadness of their situation.  I could play an image of retail splendor, which seems a surreal concept given the awful nature of the previous thought.  Or, I could play an image of the weather, but that seems so inconsequential, unless you’re living in Fargo, where it’s so cold tonight that the salt spread on the roads is simply incapable of melting the ice. It snowed here along the shore of Lake Michigan this morning and I was able to make an image of an American flag.  It seemed the perfect follow-up to the Costco image… so white, but with the red of the bumper and the bottle of detergent, along with the blue of the gentleman’s jeans and the packaging of the bath tissue.  This image also speaks to the promise of America, giving me hope that the dire plight of the homeless will somehow be ameliorated. All of this made me think of earlier, simpler times, and I remembered an image I’d made years ago of the Flatiron Building in New York City, inspired by an iconic image made in 1903 by Alfred Stieglitz.  In both photographs, the Flatiron is shown in snow, and I made mine from roughly the same spot as Stieglitz made his.  And now I have a choice to make:  new or classic?  A throwback to better times or the promise of the future?  Pure weather or red, white and blue?

As anyone who’s ever been there can tell you, New York City is not exactly a quiet place.  I wanted to play off of Russ’ image of the megaphone, the silence and the shape.  Well, Park Avenue at rush-hour is noisy, and I’m sure there’s a traffic cone in there somewhere (there usually is)… and more than likely there’s a man’s head under it.

I’ve spent the past few days in New York City knowing it would be my turn while visiting my home town.  I wanted to make a new image of New York and I wanted to keep with the theme of the wispy clouds and blue skies.  At roughly 10:30 this morning events came together and I was able to make this picture while driving on the West Side Highway.  This newest of New York skyline icons, the Freedom Tower, replaces the twin towers of the old World Trade Center.  We’re moving on… so, out with the old, in with the new, welcome back to the World Trade Center, New York City.

My image of New York City’s Chrysler Building follows the “blueness” of Russ Widstrand’s Emergence, the five triangular lights in each arc of the building reminiscent of the five fingers on each hand in Russ’ image. I inhabit the blue world, typically just before sunrise and just after sunset.  Everything turns a monochromatic cobalt blue at magic time and I exploit it on a regular basis.  This particular evening I was on a rooftop on Fifth Avenue, three blocks away.  I was in the midst of a shoot for the Warner Brothers film Batman & Robin* when I made this image with my 600mm/f4.0 lens (I know, most guys would have bought a car).  I love the way the stainless steel facade picked-up the dusky blue sky, the exquisite detail the lens produces, the blue on blue quality makes the hair on the back of my neck stand-up.   *When viewing the film, every time you see Gotham City you’re looking at my pictures of New York re-built to create the Gotham skyline.