23-MAR-2009
The Cloud Club, Chrysler Building, New York City, New York, 2009
The Chrysler Building, once was the world’s tallest, is distinguished by its Art Deco crown. Yet what lies inside of that crown? From 1930 to 1979, three of its seven floors held the Cloud Club, which included a futuristic main dining room with polished granite columns and etched glass sconces, a cloud mural on its high curving ceiling, and a mural of Manhattan. Walter Chrysler himself – the man who commissioned the building -- had his own private dining room in the Cloud Club, featuring an etched glass frieze of automobile workers. And there was also a private dining room for the building’s Texaco executives, dominated by a giant mural of a refinery, and equipped with what was said to be the “grandest men’s room in all of New York.” After World War II, both the Cloud Club and the Chrysler Building fell on hard times, and the last blow came when Texaco moved its executives to Westchester County. The club closed for good in 1979. I wanted to pay my own respects to the memory of the legendary Cloud Club, but could not find any fluffy clouds to gather round the Art Deco crown. So I did the next best thing – I photographed the distinctive Art Deco crown with a long telephoto lens through a rising cloud of steam coming out of a pipe on Lexington Avenue.
21-MAR-2009
Prometheus, Rockefeller Center, New York City, New York, 2009
After the Statue of Liberty, Paul Manship’s gilded eight-ton 1934 sculpture of Prometheus is probably the most famous statue in New York City. Prometheus is said to have stolen fire from the god Zeus and given it to mankind. The model for Prometheus was a man named Leonardo Nole, a postal worker from New Rochelle, New York. He was a fitness buff, and had a taut fit body that Manship saw as perfect representation of a Greek god. His modeling fee (during the Great Depression) was $1 an hour. Nole died in 1998 at the age of 95. The statue itself was originally called Leaping Louie by New Yorkers, no doubt because the stock market had crashed, it was located at the base of a tall building, and it appeared to be frozen in mid-plummet. It originally anchored a shopping plaza, but it failed, and was replaced with a skating rink. Thousands of tourists photograph this statue every day, and hundreds skate below its feet, but few realize what it represents, and mentions of Paul Manship, Leonardo Nole, and Leaping Louie would draw a blank stare. I photographed the 75-year- old Prometheus by abstracting it down to the head and arm and a row of eleven jets of water. I did not include its torch because the hair itself seems to be a mass of fire. I underexposed the image to saturate the gilded surface of the sculpture and make it appear to be reaching towards us out of the past.
21-MAR-2009
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, New York, 2009
When St. Patrick’s opened in 1879, it was the tallest building in midtown New York. Today, it is dwarfed by Rockefeller Center just across Fifth Avenue, and by the glass walls of the office towers adjacent to it. This image tells such a story, and does it through abstraction. I reveal only a small portion of James Renwick’s intricate Gothic Revival façade, yet at the same time imply the height of its towers by reflecting one of them in the background building.
23-MAR-2009
Riverside Church, New York City, New York, 200
Riverside Church, built in 1930 with the support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in Morningside Heights, near the banks of the Hudson River, is the tallest church in the United States. Instead of describing its height by photographing its exterior, I chose to shoot its soaring stained glass windows from the inside, and compare them in scale to the tiny figure of a caretaker walking below them. The church has long been a center of lively political discussion. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro have all addressed its congregation.
21-MAR-2009
Illusions, New York City, New York, 2009
A huge upscale sportswear store on Fifth Avenue provides an appropriate symbolic backdrop for the silver stretch limousine that stands at rest beside it, most of it hidden in deep shadow. Everything in this image symbolizes affluence, yet no actual people are visible except for sanitized versions of humanity: the mannequins and fashion models displayed in the store windows. The ominous tone of this image suggests that wealth and power is both temporary and illusory, and their trappings may have lost their edge in these troubled times.
21-MAR-2009
News, New York City, New York, 2009
“News,” Isamu Noguchi’s first major architectural commission (1938-1940), was a stainless steel bas-relief mounted over the entrance to the Associated Press Building in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Its power rests in its huge scale. To make that scale speak, I waited for a person to leave the building and I photographed him just as he turned to his right. His directional flow is exactly the opposite of the flow of Noguchi’s dynamic diagonal that ties his massive sculpture together. The heroic figures on the wall are four times the size of the man in this picture. They represent real people engaged in the process of recording and transmitting news, yet Noguchi gives that task greater importance by rendering them in monumental scale. I make Noguchi’s art express that point to an even greater degree in this photograph by comparing his huge figures to the mere mortal who is leaving the building.
22-MAR-2009
Flatiron Building, New York City, New York, 2009
The Flatiron Building takes its name from the shape forced on it by the triangular plot it stands on. Designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, it was among the first skyscrapers in the world when it was built in 1902. Locals feared that a strong wind might blow it down, which caused many to call the building “Burnham’s Folly.” Today, its offices are highly coveted – particularly those at the point of the triangle which feature amazing northern views of the another famous New York landmark, the Empire State Building. The current tenants are a group of publishers. In early 2009, an Italian real estate company purchased a majority stake in the structure, and plans to turn it into a luxury hotel when the leases of the current tenants expire in 2019. The building has a special meaning for photographers as well – it is the subject of famous images taken by Edward Steichen in 1904 and Alfred Stieglitz in 1903. In my own image of the Flatiron Building, I’ve tried to equate it to a ship, steering a course on a dangerous sea. To do this, I’ve included only the triangular upper corner of the building, framing it in the midst of an array of bare branches. The color is rich and warm and full of energy, while the detail eloquently defines Burnham’s Beau Arts style.
22-MAR-2009
Tomb of General Worth, New York City, New York, 2009
A general is buried under a traffic island in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in New York City. His name was William Jenkins Worth. He was wounded in battle in the War of 1812, but went on to play a heroic role in the Mexican-American War in 1847. He died of cholera in Texas in 1849 and his remains are interred below an obelisk standing on an island of land where Fifth Avenue meets Broadway at 25th Street. Fort Worth, Texas, was named after him. I photographed the small bronze statue of General Worth that is set into the face of his tomb. The sun casts a large shadow, which adds a heroic dimension to the figure. I converted it to black and white to strengthen the character of both man and horse.
22-MAR-2009
Ensnared, New York City, New York, 2009
This reclining classical figure, which sits on top of a pediment over one of the doorways of the New York Appellate Court Building opposite Madison Square Park, is called “Evening.” I under expose my image to give it an environmental context worthy of its name. One third of the building’s construction budget in 1900 was devoted to art – a national competition was held to determine the list of sculptors who would work on the project. A mesh net surrounds the figure, in case any of the 109-year-old sculpture should break loose of its moorings. It ensnares “Evening,” and makes it linger.
23-MAR-2009
Grant’s Tomb, New York City, New York, 2009
General Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Armies to victory in the Civil War, and later became the 18th President of the United States, is entombed in the largest mausoleum in North America. Built in Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson River, the tomb was completed in 1897. Over a million people had attended Grant’s funeral two years earlier. Over the years, as interest in the Civil War declined, Grant was virtually forgotten, and the tomb was allowed to decay. One hundred years after its completion, the national park service spent almost two millions dollars to restore the tomb, and today it is in pristine condition. I photographed the two sculptures placed over the entrance, screened by the barren trees. They flank a tablet bearing four carved words from Grant’s letter accepting the Republican nomination for President in 1868: “Let us have peace.”
23-MAR-2009
Sarcophagus, Grant’s Tomb, New York City, New York, 2009
Ulysses S. Grant is entombed within an 8 ½-ton red granite sarcophagus in the center of the mausoleum. Julia Grant was interred within an identical sarcophagus at her husband’s side after her death in 1902. I photograph the Grant sarcophagus as a reflective abstraction of a geometric slab seemingly floating within the curving marble of the tomb’s sanctuary. By converting the image to black and white, I suggest a funerary tone and remove the warm color of morning light that fills the sanctuary.
23-MAR-2009
Alma Mater, Columbia University, New York City, New York, 2009
Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the statue of Lincoln in Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, also created the statue of the goddess Minerva that stands before Columbia’s Low Memorial Library. Known as Alma Mater, the statue has become the symbol of the University, one of the oldest in the United States. I remove the statue’s color, helping it blend into the shadows that form between the pillars of the library. Holding a staff with one hand, and extending the other hand upwards, the statue seems to energize those columns and makes the image whole.