The Bowery (for my friend Art)

Everyday when I leave my apartment just off the Bowery on Stanton Street I have to navigate through the construction chaos of the New Museum. I’ve photographed this before with my digital camera, the red painted plywood and the blue netting. There’s so much construction in the neighborhood that the city should issue hard hats to the residents. You pick your way through this red and blue tunnel as steel beams are hoisted overhead during the day and Bowery street denizens weave and slumber at night. PEDESTRIANS THIS WAY. So, you follow and suddenly find yourself confronted by Christy Turlington in red–it’s the Bono campaign to raise money for AIDS–sitting in the lotus position, oblivious to the clang of steel and shouted epithets of the iron workers, oblivious to the huddled figures, the last of the Bowery bums, soon to be outnumbered by the bright shiny people come to see new art at the New Museum. And confronted yet again by a photograph by Annie Leibovitz, the most famous iconographer in the world.