Sunday, September 11, 2011

Field and Stream











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3 comments:

  1. TCSeptember 11, 2011 at 6:13 AM

    Curtis, that top picture is a beauty. The red boat.

    It is told that Turner, working like a whirlwind at his large pictures even as they were in the process of being mounted for exhibition, often came back at the last minute to stand off and eyeball the whole thing, and then would often step forward and boldly daub in a bright splash of red.

    Angelica, conversely, likes the second photo, which reminds her of Ozymandias, in its perspective upon the works and structures of Man.

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  2. ACravanSeptember 11, 2011 at 8:15 AM

    Thank you and Angelica for noticing. The photos really are both quite something, for formal reasons, for what they show and what they bring back in memories. I've loved lower Manhattan since I first experienced it, although it's changed a lot, and for the worse, since then. About 10 years after these pictures were taken, we lived in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights where we had a fine view of the Staten Island Ferry coursing back and forth all day. Around the same time, I would be sent to court in Staten Island regularly, giving me a chance to ride the ferry and constantly be impressed into informal tour guide service by visitors to the city, which I didn't mind at all. One funny thing I learned about was the extremely parochial nature of Staten Island. When you arrived in court there, once they determined that you were not a native, i.e., an "off-Islander", they explained that you didn't stand a chance of succeeding in any respect in their courts. However, I would like you to know that they were lovely about it. Curtis

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  3. John PtakSeptember 14, 2011 at 3:36 AM

    Curtis--you make the parochialism of the legal system of SI sound like a mossy covered bridge from Vermont. Having grown up there I can well imagine the monosyllables used in the communication to the off-islander. // I used to have the take the ferry quite often to Manhattan when I was a kid, and I well remember not liking the WTC at all...while it was under construction. First one tower would rise, then the other--it just looked ugly in my head, I think because it looked somehow like it was coming down rather than going up. But when it was finished, it became something else entirely...then I liked it. // I used to love when the ferry started to glide into the terminal on the Manhattan side--everything became so quiet, the buildings enormous and still and silent.

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