MAINLY MANHATTAN

Goose Press, 1997

“I complied this composite portrait of New York, focusing on the streets of Manhattan with occasional excursions to places like Red Hook, Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Brighton Bridge, over a five-year period in a state of never-ending amazement at the urban landscape and the multicolored inhabitants. Amazement at the shapes and sizes of buildings, bridges, parks (“If you have a Park Related Problem call 1-800-201-PARK) and parking lots, at the sculptures and monuments in the squares and plazas and the graphics of the bold white arrows, lozenges and words on the asphalt; and the general friendliness of the natives… But if the visitor, struck by the fact in the subway people do not look one another in the eye, concludes that New Yorkers are an unkind lot, he is mistaken. Rather, protecting one’s space in a means of defending one’s visual and physical integrity in the crowded environment in which New Yorkers have to live, just as a thin layer of humid air protects the skin against the heat in a hot sauna. Therefore, the golden rule in the New York code of conduct reads: ;avoid contact, whether eye or physical, save by mutual consent. If you bump into a stranger, or touch him inadvertently, apologize him humbly. You may look at someone, but when you see his eyes turn in your direction avert your gaze unless you wish to strike up na conversation, which is usually no problem”.

(the author)