33rd St & 6th Ave, N.Y.C. 1925

Gottlob Briem made this print of 33rd St & 6th Ave in New York City using etching, a process with infinite possibilities to explore tone and line. Look how the sharp hatching of the metal beams above contrasts with the soft grain of the distant skyscraper, the way these marks describe light and shadow. I’m drawn to the figures at the bottom of the image, this mass of tiny dark strokes which somehow read as ‘crowd’. The artist hasn’t laboured over the details but rather let the image emerge through a loose, intuitive process. This feels very contemporary. It puts me in mind of someone like Rackstraw Downes, whose perspectival cityscapes play with observation and abstraction. There’s an embrace of ambiguity here, a willingness to let the city speak for itself, rather than imposing a fixed view.