Journal/Brian Rose: New York/Prince Street

Stanton Street, just off the Bowery

I often walk across town on Prince Street through Nolita (northern Little Italy) and Soho. It's a familiar environment, one that I generally take for granted. But when I slow down a bit, and look into the flow of people, the blur of signage, the play of light and shadow, I find a world in which the self-conscious display of advertising and architecture echoes the real flesh and blood humanity moving through it. Men and women clutch at each other. Spoken words are not so much communication as non sequiturs, repeated slogans. Objects of desire–faces, bodies, clothing, electronics–float reflected, spotlit, behind glass.