I went down to the area around the WTC yesterday–January 1, 2012. Above is the view of 1 WTC, still not topped out, from Broadway and Ann Street. St. Paul’s church is to the left of the tower. 1 WTC is now around 90 stories with 14 to go. It still appears somewhat stubby for such a tall building, but I think it will look slimmer once the triangular facets extend all the way to their apexes. A large spire will go on top of the flat roof, which will greatly exceed the height of the previous Twin Towers.
Nearby on Church Street I took a photograph looking toward the WTC site, 4 WTC can be seen rising in the rear. An ad for the upcoming movie about 9/11–Extremely Loud Incredibly Close–can be seen at left in the subway entrance. Both photographs were shot in 4×5 negative, but the images here were made with the digital camera I use for my blog.
Two relevant stories worth noting. The 9/11 museum and the Port Authority are feuding about money, and it appears that the opening of the museum will be substantially delayed–now more than 10 years after 9/11. Article here. A muslim police cadet, Mohammad Salman Hamdani, killed on 9/11, who was initially suspected of being involved in the attack, but later exonerated and honored as a hero for his actions, has had his name relegated to an obscure part of the 9/11 memorial reserved “for those who had only a loose connection, or none, to the World Trade Center.” Article here.
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.
It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Vaclav Havel, playwright, political dissident, and former president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. When I traveled the Iron Curtain in 1985 and 1987, Havel and others who resisted the communist/Soviet hegemony of eastern Europe, was always in my thoughts. I skirted the Cold War border from the relative luxury of my rental car while Havel languished in prison or house arrest smuggling out statements and manifestos.
One such fundamental experience, that which I called “antipolitical politics,” is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long-term, and hard to measure; often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, conscience, and subconsciousness, and it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumed therein and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident-and I think that is an experience of an essential and universal importance-that a single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters.
It is becoming evident that even in today’s world, and especially on this exposed rampart where the wind blows most sharply, it is possible to oppose personal experience and the natural world to the “innocent” power and to unmask its guilt, as the author of The Gulag Archipelago has done. It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics and can, even today, have an undeniable political power. The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and addresses the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than entire brigades of hired propagandists can, though speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honoring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation.
Yes, “antipolitical politics” is possible. Politics “from below:’ Politics of man, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is not an accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. Under the “rule of everydayness” we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars.
Some years later I found myself in Prague. It was 1990, one year after the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was meeting up with Suzanne Vega who was playing there and in East Berlin–incandescent performances both of them, fed by the still uncontaminated spirit of liberation in the air. I wrote here about them in my journal. I remember walking from the train station to the central square of Prague behind a group of teenagers singing the dut dut duts from Suzanne’s song Tom’s Diner. Again, years later, I met up with Suzanne in Olomouc in what was now the Czech Republic as she performed Tom’s Diner for Vaclav Havel over a video linkup. Havel was a fan, as he was of the old Velvet Underground and Lou Reed.
Here is, perhaps, the finest tribute to Havel on the 20th years of the Velvet Revolution in Prague on 17 November 2009:
I just completed teaching a class at ICP (International Center of Photography) called Photographing New York: The Lower East Side. It was a class based on photographing the neighborhood and then assembling a book of our work.
I knew this would be a challenging class in that we were doing everything–shooting, editing, selecting, and designing–all in a ten week timeframe. The students were of diverse backgrounds from all over the world, and had varying degrees of experience, from near beginners to some whose work was nuanced and sophisticated. But the idea was to present each at his or her best and to create a coherent, “real book” that we would all be proud of.
My teaching assistant Ed Cheng and I both participated in the book–Ed contributed images of Eldridge Street where he had grown up, and I took my view camera out on the Bowery adding to an ongoing collection of pictures of the rapidly gentrifying former skid row. Although I have no doubt that a class based entirely on photographing the Lower East Side with a critique at the end would result in good images, the knowledge that our photographs would all go into a publicly accessible book, in my opinion, elevated the conversation.
The students did a great job, many of them with little experience in making photos within tightly focused thematic or conceptual parameters, as well as working against a serious deadline. I think the results seen in the book speak for themselves.
I have been asked to teach the class again in the spring semester. So, anyone interested, keep an eye on the ICP class catalogue for further information (ICP School). I’ll post something here as well.
Friday evening I walked down to the World Trade Center with an invitation to the 48th floor of 7 WTC, the first completed structure in the rebuilding post 9/11. Silverstein Properties, the owner, has made the 48th floor available as an artists’ studio, though soon the occupants will have to make way for a paying tenant.
The entire floor was unpartitioned and open with raw concrete floor, exposed fire proofed steel beams, and wrap around floor to ceiling windows with stunning views. At least four artists were on display including Marcus Robinson who is a painter and videographer. His time lapse images of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center were shown on a large video screen.
Another artist, Todd Stone, had a gallery-like exhibition of his paintings on one side of the floor documenting 9/11 as seen from his Tribeca studio. I usually don’t like to see images of the horror of 9/11 itself, but these were done as a spontaneous reaction to what was happening a short distance away, the paint somehow distancing the event while at the same time heightening the attention to it in a way that photographs do not.
I took a few photographs through the windows, one looking down on the memorial–glass reflections unavoidable. Stone has been doing paintings of the rebuilding, and he was working on one of the 1 WTC while I was there. I spoke with him for several minutes, and I traded one of my WTC books for one of his exhibition catalogues.
Painting by Todd Stone
Snow scene from the 48th floor with Diebenkorn-ish colors.
A model of 1 WTC stood on the south end of the 48th floor adjacent to the real thing going up outside the window. The late afternoon sun just caught the translucent plastic of the model giving it a golden glow. The actual tower will never appear so crystalline I am afraid, despite its faceted exterior. But we shall see…
Final cover design of Time and Space on the Lower East Side
Time and Space on the Lower East Side is now complete and on its way to the printer in Germany. My publisher tried to get a printer in New York, but none offered the price/quality proportion desired. It’s a sad testimony to American competitiveness that we have to go abroad for something that is ultimately done on widely available machines operated by a small group of skilled technicians. Somewhat cheaper prices were available from Asia, but dealing with the distance and communication difficulties did not seem worth the trouble.
The design of the book is loosely based on the prototype I did with Blurb–the same image using the shadowed area for type. But Warren Mason of Measure Design made it much more elegant. We dropped the magenta type in favor of a yellow accented “Lower East Side.” However, the magenta has reappeared with a vengeance on the slipcover of the limited edition book. The message being this is not your father’s or grandfather’s Lower East Side in somber black and white.
Slipcase for the limited edition of Time and Space on the Lower East Side
The slipcase will be cloth covered with the type stamped into the material. The hardcover book, which will contain an 8×10 print will slide into the slipcase. These will be numbered and signed 1-100. I am hoping to make these available for sale on the website photo-eye and a few selected bookshops. The starting price will be $250. Due to the overall cost of production, the trade edition will be priced somewhat higher than $50–so those of you who donated to Kickstarter will be getting a nice discount.
I expect to get a production schedule soon and can then project a likely date for release of the book–both the regular trade edition and limited edition. I am guessing that I will have a small number of books sent by air in early January, and the rest of the press run will arrive in late February shipped by boat. Hopefully, I will be looking at, and approving, proofs this month. As soon as I have the production schedule together, I will begin planning for the a book launch and other PR related activities.
Quotes from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation website:
The Wiechquaskeck Lenapes occupied this site when, in 1639, the Dutch East India Company brought the first Europeans to settle in the Bronx. In 1646, Dutchman Adriaen Van Der Donck (1620-1655) became the first single owner of what is now Van Cortlandt Park. His vast estate “de Jonkeerslandt” gave Yonkers its name. The land passed through several families, each gradually developing it into viable farmland and a working plantation. During the 1690s, the 16-acre lake was created when Tibbetts Brook was dammed to power a gristmill.
The Van Cortlandt name was first associated with the tract of land bounded by modern Yonkers City Line between Broadway, Jerome Avenue, and Van Cortlandt Park East in 1694, when Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought the property. The Van Cortlandt Mansion was built in 1748 by his son, Frederick Van Cortlandt, whose family occupied the land until the 1880s. Frederick also established the family burial plot on Vault Hill where, at the onset of the American Revolution, City Clerk Augustus Van Cortlandt hid the city records from the British Army.
I’ve been catching up on scanning recent 4×5 negatives from the Bowery and the World Trade Center, my two current projects. The image above was made a few months ago and was taken a couple of blocks from ground zero. A fence displays the list of names of those killed on 9/11–The Heroes of September 11, 2001 it reads–and the steel containers behind hold contractor offices or equipment storage related to the nearby construction site. The names are now found at the completed 9/11 memorial, etched in stone.
It is an image that I find particularly satisfying–the multiplicity of layers, materials, colors–a telling detail, the 9/11 list, that gives larger context and raison d’etre. The emptiness of the streets seems almost unreal in such a densely built place. It’s not a photograph I’d likely take with a small camera–or at least thinking through the medium of a small camera. It is an image made with the assumption that details will read even when printed large, or especially when printed large. The computer screen gives only an impression of what would be there in a higher resolution print.
