Postcard – Year 1983: New York (Balcony), by Laura Roos

“New York” (Balcony) – 1983

Overlooking midwinter Manhattan, gazing across space to buildings beyond:

Complexity in simplicity.

A series of verticals: from the lines of residential and office buildings, to the foreground pillar, to the struts supporting the railing.

A set of horizontals: a flat-topped skyline, resting below a cloudless horizon.

An array of diagonals: shadowed gaps between the planks of the floor, the double railing sweeping behind the pillar from side to side.

Contrast, concentrated: Light, and dark, and light and dark again, alternating across the image … the brightness of pillar, balcony, and sky, and the darkness of the city below.

Everything is in balance.

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“New York”, by Laura Roos, 1983.

(This image was scanned from a postcard (B 742) published by Art Unlimited, Amsterdam.)

Postcard – Year 1915: View from the Window, by Alfred Stieglitz

“From the Window of 291, 1915”

The mystery of evening.
The ambiguity of urbanity.
Illumination within darkness.

Alfred Stieglitz’s “From the Back Window” is as much – is more – question, than photo. 

Light glows, solid, through a solitary window, only yards away.  
Light falls, muted, upon a balcony, nearby.
(And all else is still?)

Nearby buildings, interlock, overlap, intermingle; only visible ambiently, as angles, edges, and corners.

Even blacker than the empty sky: Walls, invisible.

Light emerges, from the windows in the far background.  (Why?  What’s happening within?)

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Evidently Stieglitz availed himself of this vantage point at least twice, as evidenced in the image below, which – though also taken at night – is oriented from a different angle and therefore captures another field of view.  The obvious differences are the clothesline, and, the windows in the foreground apartments and the three high-rises in the distance.  The photograph is titled “From the Back Window — “291” (1)”, and it’s from the online exhibition “ALFRED STIEGLITZ AND MODERN AMERICA – at MFA Boston”, of September 12, 2017, via What Will You Remember.

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The upper image was scanned from a postcard (ISBN 01-07477-2) printed by MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) in 1992.  Descriptive information on the card states: “Platinum print, 9 7/8″ x 7 15/16”, from “Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949, 49-55-35”.

The lower image is described in the Boston MFA’s caption similarly and simply, as a “platinum print, [with] artist-applied coating”.