I’ve always loved this set of pictures. Taken when I had a good camera. When I still had to get photos developed.
One day I was killing time before meeting up with my sister at some bar in … Soho? I can’t remember where. And the LIGHT on the streets made everything look magical. I wandered around Soho, and the sun was low in the sky and blazing gold so it made all these stunning shadows. The colors seemed brighter and more vivid than usual. Some high-end store had a bunch of dresses for sale out on the sidewalk and they almost looked like vivid butterflies, like the colors couldn’t be real. I walked on Houston Street, and my eyes roved around looking for things to capture. There’s way more in this set than what I shared here. Graffiti, little ornaments at the tops of buildings – all made magical by this crazy molten-gold light. Then I came across basically a “junk shop” on Houston, one of those places not really long for this world anymore in New York City, now that we’ve been sold out to developers. There was a big lot behind a chain-link fence, where random stuff was piled up, making cool incongruous impression. But the main stuff was put out on the sidewalk. A Jesus statue. A deer’s head. And all these mirrors hung up on the fence, making through-the-looking-glass impressions of the sidewalk and all the people passing by.
I didn’t buy anything. But thanks to these photos, I remember that late summer afternoon perfectly clearly. Well, except for what bar we met up in. I didn’t take pictures of it, maybe that’s why.
