I love coming to know a city through walking. When I was last in New York in early Autumn 2018, I travelled by foot almost everywhere – from Mid to Downtown Manhattan, across Brooklyn Bridge to the Time Out Market and from Brooklyn Heights down to Carroll Gardens. Amongst my many photographs mapping these treks, are a series of short audio-visual clips on The High Line. In the late, warm afternoon sun, walkers meander lazily, casting their fleeting shadows on the trees and foliage of the Line. The moving imagery and sounds are now traces of a fully breathing city, in temporary slumber, waiting to dazzle again.
The High Line, September 2018
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Categories Culminant, Foudroyant, Georgic, Holus Bolus, Manhattan, Vaticinate
Watching this during this Corona Virus time of shelter-in-place makes me even more aware of the sensuality of living in this city. Even our shadows find a delicate intimacy, a tenderness that mingles with the fauna, allowing everything to become part of a composed whole. Now, in my pod at home, I am atomized, denied even this visual and aural pleasure. Thank you for this reminder of things to come, to return. I hope.
Such pleasures will delight again, I am sure. Hopefully this time we are living through will afford us a greater appreciation of their fragility.
I see this clip representing Culminant, Foudroyant, Georgic, and Holus Bolus views of NYC beautifully and poetically, yet I’m particularly struck by the ‘vaticination’ lens. Were this clip posted last fall, it most likely wouldn’t have been sorted into that category. But now it’s the most meaningful category for it to be listed in: So much life, evidence of human presence and their voices, yet invisible, unless by oneself, with nature getting ample chance to grow from the products of human industry.
Thank you Erik. I can recall so clearly the moments filming the foliage and shadows and having that uncanny artistic knowing that the clips would one day have a home. ‘Foudroyant’ as a title was sparked by the sheer beauty of the experience through the lens of memory. The ‘vaticination’ lens allows a more profound revisiting of those moments.