Archive for the ‘street life’ Category
Dog Days
In honor of beginnings, the ’70s, and the recent passing of Sidney Lumet, I give you the first three minutes of Dog Day Afternoon. The film begins with New York City in motion, cued to the music of Elton John (of all people!). The camera sweeps down these city streets without lingering or pausing anywhere. [...]
In: beginnings, contemporary, documentary, film, gaze, street life · Tagged with: A.O. Scott, Dog Day Afternoon, Martin Scorsese, New York City, postaweek2011, Sidney Lumet, The Last Waltz, The New York Times
Faces in a Crowd
I saw a restored print of Taxi Driver this last weekend at the Film Forum in the Village and thought that it’s starting to look like a documentary about New York City in the 1970s. To see Martin Scorsese’s iconic film again, now, is to see whatever you didn’t see before: the traffic, the sidewalks, [...]
In: film, gaze, street life · Tagged with: Cybill Shepherd, Martin Scorsese, New York City, postaweek2011, Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver
Close Quarters
Thomas Annan is best known for documenting slum conditions in Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century. His photographs of the “closes” of the old city show the growing population, displaced from living on the land and recruited into factory work, squeezed into a new urban landscape. The buildings are literally close and Annan [...]
In: architecture, documentary, nineteenth century, photography, street life · Tagged with: Glasgow, Thomas Annan
Personal Space
I went to see “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography” at MoMA with my father last weekend. Born in 1926, like this photograph, he is an artist and a man made feminist by the accident of three daughters. This show, drawn from the museum’s own collection and on display until March 21, 2011, [...]
In: documentary, photography, street life · Tagged with: MoMA, Tina Modotti
Once Upon a Time in New York
The text is what draws me into this piece of Berenice Abbott’s long-gone New York, though the image is beautifully composed. The squared off windows seem like pages filled with text, as the menus and billboards and signage cover so much glass that it would be impossible to see through to the inside anyway. The [...]
In: photography, street life, text · Tagged with: Berenice Abbott, New York City