Given the upscale nature of New York’s Fifth Avenue, one does not expect to find inscriptions of this kind on its buildings. But Fifth Avenue is not always upscale. As it threads its way below 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue becomes a hodgepodge of commerce.
Many of its buildings are derelicts, such as this one, buildings either being slowly taken apart or being renovated. Graffiti artists throng to such structures, leaving their mark on a city and its buildings. It appears as if somebody has neatly painted a cross on the remaining red bricks with a roller. Other followed, leaving five or six signatures over the cross. The neatly painted red bricks hosting the graffiti contrasts strongly to the shadowy brick that is fading all around it. All of which holds the seeds of a successful expressive image. But the deal was sealed for me by the flow of light and the presence of shadows within the scaffolding that enveloped this structure. It allows me to begin my image in the upper left hand corner, and then follow a symbolic ray of light down along a diagonal until it expands into an illuminated square that holds the graffiti.