November contact sheet
All quick shots, taken on the 15-minute walk from the parking lot to NYU, or the return trip at night. I'd like to get back to these spots, when there's time to settle in and wait for the right light and find the best vantage point, rather than shooting on the move. It's the only part of the city I know of that's not on the grid system, somehow you can feel that. Can't imagine a village on a grid.
December 1st, dawn, 65 degrees (soundtrack: demo Interlude for Viola & Cello, © John Aiello 2009)
When I was a kid, 65 degrees on December 1st would have been a big deal. Now we're pretty much used to it, despite whole groups of people (even some smart ones) still denying climate change.
It's scary to me, unsettling. But it made for a beautiful,haunted morning: the trees 2-d cut outs, a Japanese watercolor, or a Whistler landscape.
The one of the bicycle wheel that snuck in here was taken in the underground parking lot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The sound track to this one is the demo a piece I wrote for viola & cello, played by my friend Greta and me.
The Abandoned Village (sound track: Interlude for viola & cello © John Aiello 2009)
On the first few days with the new camera, before I could really even focus the thing, I started looking close to home for the overlooked. I'd driven past this place hundreds of times, but never imagined the extent of the ruins and moodiness behind the gates. Shot first on a rainy morning, then the following gray afternoon, these pictures might have been only the tip of the iceberg: sunset or dawn shots, spring, winter, there might have been a lot more. But what's not in view are all the signs :"warning asbestos." Apparently this entire little village of 50 buildings or so was condemned and then abandoned sometime in the 1970s, I'm guessing.
What struck me most were the doors left ajar, windows cranked halfway open, vegetation like lace spread everywhere.
I started shooting furtively, but by day two I was getting more and more brazen. The signs said to "Keep Out" of the buildings, but there was nothing to say the grounds were off limits. Everywhere I turned there was something else to look at. But finally, while shooting the soaring brick smoke stacks of the old facility's power plant, an official of some sort appeared out of nowhere and asked me to leave. Why? Somehow the place felt like a museum to me.
At least I got these images.
The sound track to this one is the demo a piece I wrote for viola & cello, played by my friend Greta and me.