New York/The High Line - JOURNAL • BRIAN ROSE

We walked the High LIne on Christmas Day with relatives visiting from out of town. It was a relatively mild day with sun and clouds, the low slanting light of late December. The plantings on the High Line at this time of year are mostly brown with bits of color here and there, holly bushes and the like. As wonderful as the design of the elevated viaduct is, what interests me the most are the views of the city from it–the unique possibility of looking straight down cross streets, across the rooftops of warehouses and the hodgepodge of buildings in west Chelsea. This was once an industrial and distribution area serving the Hudson River docks. Today, it is the art gallery center of New York, and new apartment buildings have gone up throughout the neighborhood. The old warehouses are mostly occupied by businesses in the creative fields, and a media company occupies the striking Frank Gehry building located on the West Side Highway.

This is my Christmas walk up the High Line with two photographs made at ground level–a rendering of the future Hudson Yards development and a peek into the empty sun flecked Apple store back down on 14th Street with a bevy of strangely glowing screens.

The First $100,000 I Ever Made by John Baldessari — © Brian Rose