08-AUG-2006
Golden bottle, South Street, New York City, 2006
It was a simple sign with no words – only a large bottle hanging over the street to mark the shop of a wine merchant. I juxtaposed that golden bottle with the dark green doors and pillars at the entrance to the shop – comparing light to dark, and gold to green. By juxtaposing objects of opposite brightness and colors, we express maximum contrast to draw the eye and stir the mind. The fact that those dark doors have bright brass doorknobs only enhances the contrast. This sign is a throwback to another time when literacy was rare and merchants used signs showing exactly what they sold, often in stylized form such as this. South Street is one of Manhattan’s most historic neighborhoods. Some of its buildings are nearly 200 years old. This image, because of its powerful juxtapositions, helps to tell its story.
03-AUG-2006
Medieval architecture, The Cloisters, New York City, 2006
The Cloisters, holding the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
is a group of European buildings that were transplanted in the 1930s to a park high over the Hudson River at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. This image shows a small part of one building – a column and the roof supports from a cloister of a French monastery. I built the image in two layers – a simple juxtaposition of foreground and background subject matter. It is also a juxtaposition of color and tonality – with light stone in the foreground contrasting to the dark ceiling overhead. I repeat the arching roof supports in both background and foreground to link the two layers.
02-AUG-2006
Cross-section, New York City, 2006
The early morning sun gives this cityscape the glow of painted canvas. It is a cross-section of contrasting scale, color and architectural style, underscoring the evolution of New York. In this three-layer image, I juxtapose three progressively higher structures. A small red 19th Century building occupies the foreground and a slightly larger early 20th Century building in the middle ground. In the windows of the 19th Century building we can see abstracted reflections of 21st Century advertising billboards. The middle building is topped with a water tank matching the color of the massive structure forming the background layer. From the look of the faded signs on its wall, it seems to date from the early years of the 20th century as well. ¬
08-AUG-2006
Emotions, South Street Seaport, New York City, 2006
In this two layer image, I’ve juxtaposed sharply contrasting figures in size and orientation – the men in the foreground are incongruously smaller than the woman in the advertisement behind them. The men look at each other, while the woman looks right past them. Yet I’ve also juxtaposed similar emotional responses – all three characters in this image appear to be laughing or smiling. Whenever we can juxtapose contrasts and similarities within the same image, the opportunity for expression increases.
03-AUG-2006
Hanging a right, New York City, 2006
This night-time image of the intersection of 24th Street and Lexington Avenue was made from the roof of a residential building by using a one second exposure. The moving traffic has created a contrasting juxtaposition for us – the car making a right hand turn is reduced to a streak of curving lights, while the traffic roaring through the intersection is abstracted down to diagonal blurs. A secondary juxtaposition contrasts the stationary cars parked on either side of the crossing streets to the moving traffic.
03-AUG-2006
Crypt, The Cloisters, New York City, 2006
My goal was to simplify this tomb, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval collection on display at its Cloisters branch. I chose to do it by juxtaposing the horizontal figure with the vertical arch soaring overhead. The contrast between the vertical and horizontal elements here is stark and filled with tension. By cutting the arch in half and running its inner edge diagonally from corner to corner, the image become abstracted – leaving completion of both the arch and the reclining figure to the viewer. I further abstract this image by converting it to black and white, draining all signs of life from both figure and arch.
08-AUG-2006
Ground Zero, New York City, 2006
Five years after terrorists toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Ground Zero remains a sobering, heart wrenching sight. On the northern rim of the vast space that once held the towers stands another lofty office building, smaller yet somewhat similar in design to those that were destroyed. The world would never be the same after September 11, 2001, and to make that point, I juxtaposed three strands of barbed wire on the top of fence that rings the site, against the neighboring skyscraper looking much like those that fell. I am juxtaposing symbol against symbol – the barbed wire representing curtailed freedoms and new restraints, and the building representing a world that is lost forever. In juxtaposing a negative against a positive symbol, I contrast then to now.
07-AUG-2006
Conversation, New York City, 2006
These four women create their own juxtaposition by pairing off and facing each other in conversation. I contrast those we can see with those we cannot. The viewer is left to fill in the details of the two abstracted women who face away from us. The women who face us seem much more animated. They are talking simultaneously, while the two listeners patiently absorb whatever may be going down here. I was struck by the uniformity of dress. It is almost as if all of them are in costume – two of them wear slacks, two wear skirts and all wear black. Two are blondes, two brunets, and all carry purses. The two who speak wear sandals; the two who listen wear shoes. Both of the speakers use their arms as they speak to express feelings, while the two who listen use passive body language. Juxtapositions are essentially a way of comparing and contrasting. There is much here to both compare and contrast.
08-AUG-2006
Among the dead, St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City, 2006
I juxtapose two live people against the resting places of ten people who are not. Shooting from behind the bench, I abstract the couple, and let their body language speak for itself. I thought at first they were mourners. But then the people below those stones have been gone for 200 years. When I later walked in front of them, I saw that they were looking at digital photos on the viewfinder of their camera.
02-AUG-2006
Fenced off, New York City, 2006
New York is a city of barriers. I moved in on these modernistic spikes that top the entrance gate to this office building’s driveway, and juxtaposed their horizontal sweep with the soaring vertical walls of the building itself. While the gate tells us to keep out, its warm coloration has already been absorbed in the distant buildings. (Note the splash of gold on the wall at left and the golden reflection in the windows.) The upward thrust of each spike is echoed in the windows and vertical trim on the buildings that rise behind them.
07-AUG-2006
In the shadows, Christopher Park, Greenwich Village, New York City, 2006
The powerful incongruity of artist George Segal’s stark white yet realistic bronze figures sitting together on a park bench becomes even more striking when we see what is juxtaposed with them on the same bench. The figures touch in friendship. The man, initially lost in the shadows, has only the bench itself to touch. The figures are part of New York City’s Gay Liberation Monument. A transcript of the plaque on the fence in the background is reproduced at:
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=10767