Thursday, December 23, 2010

That Which Defines You

 Photo: Brian Rose

This is one of my favorite all time photographs of New York. No doubt because there's a lot of personal nostalgia attached to it: a time when NYC was not part of the Disney hub, the pre-yuppified, pre-gentrified NY, when subway cars were minus life saving air conditioning, and you could walk certain downtown areas for blocks on a weekend, and count the number of humans you saw on one hand. 

Nostalgia be damned, and you still got one formidable photograph here. The contrasting hues of warm and cool tones, sleek and traditional, the constant give/take that characterize this city so always on the make. Of course, New Yorkers no longer "recall" how so many of us once derided those very background towers for being the plain, ungainly intrusions that so unbalanced our skyline. Once denied them, we instantly realized just how much they had become an inseparable part of us. They helped define us just as any other symbol, artifact or ritual that was uniquely New York. As instantly recognizable as our own accent.

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