New York/LES

Third Avenue/Cooper Square and East 7th Street (4x5 film)

I finally finished photographing 39 buildings all around town for a real estate client. Whew.

After completing the last shot I walked down Third Avenue to Cooper Square where new construction is transforming the landscape. In the foreground, a construction fence surrounds the site of Cooper Union's new academic building, and in the rear a mega tower looms over the neighborhood. It's a hotel designed by Studio Carlos Zapata, which did the modern addition to Chicago's Soldier Field. Whatever the appropriateness of the tower, it promises to be an expressive presence. There's some pretty risky looking cantilevering going on in the reinforced concrete skeleton. I assume they know what they're doing.

I set my 4x5 camera up on Third Avenue looking south with eastern sunlight raking across the scene. I did several shots with different arrangements of people and vehicles. I knew what I wanted from having walked by this corner a couple of times in the past few weeks.