Central

Anonymous Photographer
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, New York
ca. 1870
albumen prints (stereograph)
Library of Congress, Washington DC

Dave Heath
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, New York City
ca. 1957
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Bruce Davidson
Central Park
1991
C-print
Menil Collection, Houston

Lois Conner
Central Park, New York City
1986
platinum-palladium print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mitch Epstein
American Elm, Central Park, New York
2011
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Fritz Henle
Central Park South
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Brooklyn Museum

Edward van Altena
Nature Class in Central Park
American Museum of Natural History, New York
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Rollie McKenna
Central Park, New York
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Tod Papageorge
Central Park
1979
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Larry Fink
Central Park
1962
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Joel Meyerowitz
Untitled (Central Park Scene)
1969
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Garry Winogrand
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, New York City, Easter Sunday
1973
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Childe Hassam
Beech Trees and Obelisk, Central Park
1931
etching
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Printmaker
Feeding Swans in Central Park
1874
chromolithograph
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Joel Sternfeld
Central Park, north of the Obelisk,
behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1993
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City
2003
photo-collage and mixed media on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Claes Oldenburg
Moving Pool Balls -
Proposed Colossal Monument for Central Park, N.Y.C.
1967
graphite and watercolor on paper
Menil Collection, Houston

Epigram

There is one story

that Virtue has her dwelling place above rock walls hard to climb

with a grave chorus of light-footed nymphs attendant about her,

and she is not to be looked upon by the eyes of every mortal,

only by one who with sweat, with clenched concentration

and courage, climbs to the peak.

– Simonides (556-468 BC), translated by Richmond Lattimore (1960)

Influence

Several informed critics have pointed out the un-obvious difference between the candid portraits made by Diane Arbus in the 1960s (as above) and the undeniably similar work made earlier in the century by her photography teacher, Lisette Model. What that un-obvious difference involved was cropping (or not cropping).

Arbus killed herself in 1971. She subsequently became so famous-beyond-famous that Model (who lived until 1983 but never became particularly famous on her own) gained a certain measure of reflected fame as the mentor and role-model of the departed genius.

Both Model and Arbus tended to confront their subjects (or victims, as some would say) face-on, crowding them against  the frame-edges and pushing them forward toward the viewer. Model said she envisioned her subjects exploding from the picture altogether.

Yet she also described her practice of standing at a safe, prudent, socially acceptable distance from the strangers she was shooting. Only later – in the darkroom – did she achieve the claustrophobic intimacy she wanted, by a process of radical cropping. Arbus, more of a purist in matters of technique, was reluctant to crop. Instead, she achieved the Model effect in the simplest possible manner – by stepping closer, by literally entering the personal space of strangers under scrutiny (a space the upper-class Vienna-bred Model could not seriously conceive of violating). 

Immediately above, Arbus at work (photographed by Garry Winogrand in 1969 at a Central Park "Love-In").

Arbus at work (photographed by William Gedney in 1968 at a bodybuilding competition).

Arbus in student days (photographed by Allan Arbus in 1949 while staring into the future).

Running Ahead

Photo of Mabel Watson Payne from the East Coast trip.

Used initially (this morning) on Silas & Eppie by my daughter.

Lifted from there for my own celebratory purposes.

The far-wandering family has made its safe return.

Leftover Birds

One of the Sunday projects aimed at convincing myself that I have re-entered ordinary life in California was to go through the New York photo files on the laptop – and lo! I discovered a whole series I had forgotten about. These amazing stone birds are carved in high relief along a pair of staircases in Central Park. They are part of Terrace Bridge, constructed during the American Civil War. The whole structure (including the birds) is copiously described and illustrated here.

Upper West Side

It was raining lightly when I took most of these, early in the afternoon. This is my last day in town. I leave early tomorrow morning.


In California where I come from we do not have such things as massive (though humble) posts and railings forged entirely out of solid cast iron (as above) and rusting grimly decade after decade through several defeated layers of paint.




Above, morning glories bravely tackle the gap between two brownstone facades. To make another California comparison (it is obvious that I am already thinking about heading home) this plant would have a long wet happy winter to look forward to in San Francisco, but here in New York all that frantic blue blooming at the tip-top of the vine signals the vine's own knowledge that the first frost will kill it here in less than a month.



At bottom: a Central Park passageway that I did not enter. It looks like opera scenery more than anything else – a Wagnerian grotto from which a mechanical dragon will emerge on cue.

Central Park Reservoir

After carrying around an umbrella all day yesterday without ever using it, I almost left it behind when I set out this morning, but then as I was walking around the Reservoir the promised rain did begin to materialize, and other people put up their umbrellas too.

I had not realized that the entire body of water had been renamed for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Good for her. Somebody really ought to touch up the paintwork on that plaque, though.







Nineteenth-century pedestrian overpass that leads away from the reservoir running path. In Sex and the City : the Movie, Charlotte is depicted in a dozen various maternity-athletic-wear outfits running on the reservoir path as the seasons change and her girth expands.




It was more like summer rain than winter rain, and without it the water would never have assumed that admirable slate-blue/iron-green color.


In this quiet rain I emerged from the park near one of the Met's innumerable extensions, bedded right up to the foundations by emerald lawns (except where it is more or less permanently surrounded by constructions sites).