Streetscape, New York 1936

Ilse Bing made this photograph, Streetscape, New York, using gelatin silver, which gives a beautiful range of grays. It makes me feel like I’m up really high, like Spiderman, looking down into this canyon of buildings, where tiny people swarm. What must it have been like for her to find this viewpoint? I can imagine her clambering onto a rooftop, or hanging out of a window to get the shot. Her position above the street gives us a unique way of seeing the city, but it also flattens everything out, so the buildings become shapes, organized by dark shadows. They almost look like a child's blocks. Even the great gothic cathedral is reduced to a simple angular form! What could be more modern? We are all in an ongoing conversation, like artists chatting across time. Bing’s photo reminds me of other images of New York – Charles Sheeler’s precisionist paintings, or even some of the more vertiginous photographs by someone like, say, Andreas Gursky. Like them, she’s inviting us to see the city in a new way.