Le Blog: Le Shutter View of New York

Museum of the City of New York

Lately I've let my camera take the lead on my walks through New York. There is so much history written in the buildings: a faded paper company sign on a midtown building; a white gate that stands out in a sea of green ones in Soho. Signs of what once was and is now something else...and may one day transform into businesses and industries unknown today. And if I get in trouble at Armani for taking pictures of their beautiful Gaudi-esque staircase, so be it.

Architecture is an interesting phenomena in this city, almost like trophies of golden ages past, of companies that were once thought of as indestructible and only proved to fade away after they'd made their mark on the city that never sleeps. I just read a great New York Magazine article about it, where they say:

"We live surrounded by the emblems of hubris, glittering corporate skyscrapers arranged on the skyline like trophies on a mantel. What fulminator could resist the delicious irony of two high-rise financial headquarters nearing completion just as the corporations that erected them fall to their knees? Bank of America, the country’s largest bank, is putting the finishing touches on the city’s second-tallest tower, a gracious, twisting paperweight at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street. And Goldman Sachs is quietly slipping a 43-story glass scepter into Battery Park City."

New York is like a graveyard devoted to the notion that nothing lasts forever, as well as the fact that life (and this city) always goes on. Everyone here leases time and power until the city moves on without them. Not even the Rockefellers could last. And those that leave architectural marks keep the city gleaming for generations of workers to come, while they themselves hold on tight until they too, fade away.

Let's take a walk together...