2012
photograph
Courtesy of the artist
This third image, made last August in lower Manhattan, has a lot in common with that 2010 Paris picture. We were visiting our old friend Margie Ratner in her new apartment in the Frank Gehry building near the World Trade Center site and South Street Seaport. Margie's place is on one of the upper floors, so it has a grand view of Brooklyn and Queens. The view includes all three bridges in that area (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg) and at night you can even see the lights at JFK. The light changes all day long and with the seasons, so her windows are hypnotic. I went to the window to photograph the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn itself, then found the image also included Margie over my shoulder and two stools at her kitchen counter. At first, you're looking out into space, then you realize you must be in a room and you see the room. It's like one of those drawings of an object that at first looks like a vase, you blink, and it's two identical faces; you blink again, and it's a vase again. Which is it? Both of them. How can it be both of them? How can you be ion two spaces at once? There's the pleasure of it.