Chrysler Building • mid-1980s • 4×5 transparency

As is understood by anyone who photographs this city, it is a landscape of anecdotal, small moments, and iconic majesty–both. This is an image from my archive made with a 4×5 view camera in the early to mid-eighties. I was on a setback of an apartment building in Tudor City looking for a good view of the UN Plaza Hotel to the north. This was the view looking west along 42nd Street toward the Chrysler Building.

I like the crude attempt at making a peace symbol out of the “R” in Tudor City. “DOR” somehow says “WAR” to me. Maybe it’s the war that’s getting to me.