Looking Down, New York 1922

This gelatin silver print, Looking Down, New York, was made by Paul Strand at a time when photography was really coming into its own as a means of documenting modern life. I find myself looking at this image and thinking about what it must have been like for Strand to be up so high, looking down on the city. The buildings, the streets, the people all reduced to these tiny shapes. You can almost feel the height, that particular sense of vertigo when everything is miniaturized. And the washing lines between the buildings, full of laundry, remind you of all the lives lived in those apartments. It reminds me of other painters and photographers who were playing with perspective and point of view at the time, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York skyscrapers or Alfred Stieglitz’s cloudscapes. They were all part of this conversation about how to capture the feeling of modernity, the energy and dynamism of the city, but also the sense of alienation and anonymity that comes with it. Artists riff off each other.