New York: Two murders: 35 dollars
0 Comments Published by Brian on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 at 12:29 PM.
Well, I’m hopelessly behind. Time to turn this thing up a notch…
Saturday I met some friends for brunch in Manhattan, then went to a matinee performance of Avenue Q. My friends are connected, so they got a deal on the tickets. I was already very familiar with the music from the show, but until a few days ago could only imagine what it looked like on stage. It looks pretty neat in fact. Anyone who grew up watching Sesame Street (or is now raising someone who does), will instantly identify with it.
After the show we had some pretty great Thai food in the same neighborhood. I would even go so far as to say it was as good as, if not better than, Thai food I’ve had in Thailand.
On Sunday we met in Bryant Park, just south of the New York Public Library. We had intended to spend a part of our day strolling through Central Park, but inclement weather put a damper on those plans. We got coffee instead and skipped right ahead to the next item on the agenda, which was the International Center for Photography.
Now, we chose the ICP specifically because it is a museum devoted to photographic images, but didn’t pay too much attention to which exhibits were actually on display. My friend and I are both budding amateur photographers (He is, I should say, much further along in the budding process than I am), and we thought the ICP might prove inspirational. We had no idea what we were in for. The primary exhibit at the moment is Atta Kim: On Air. There were two series of photos in the exhibition. In the first he took pictures using extremely long exposures, some as long as eight hours. In the second, he layered several images on top of each other, like pancakes. By the way, it’s purely coincidence that the photographer is Korean, and my friend and I have both lived in Korea, but we appreciated it just the same. Regardless of his origins however, his work is amazing. I won’t reproduce any images here, but please do see some for yourself. By the way, the images in the gallery were extremely large. It does make a difference.
Downstairs at the ICP, they were showing photographs by a guy named Weegee, who I’ve never heard of before, but who also turned out to be pretty cool. He was not a great photographer in his day, but what he did was take lots and lots of photographs. He documented the everyday lives of a generation of New Yorkers, working classes and racial minorities overlooked by the mainstream media of the day. The best image of the show was a picture of a check stub from Time Magazine reading “Two Murders: 35 dollars.”
So what does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon in New York City? One sees a movie, that’s what one does. After the gallery we caught a taxi to Columbus Circle hoping to make a showing of Half Nelson. Again, an incredible work of art.
You know, I may seem to wax too effulgent in my praise for the things I saw over the weekend. But honestly, people who know me know I’m not that easily impressed. In fact, I kind of see myself as a curmudgeon who constantly looks for flaws and imperfections and ways to be disappointed. Certainly there were flaws and imperfections in everything we saw and did last weekend. The actor who played Brian in Avenue Q did not impress me. There was a major continuity problem in the movie, one of the best images in the photography show was lit badly so it was nearly impossible to see because of the glare. By and large though, the total experience was overwhelmingly satisfying. It was all just that good.
Saturday I met some friends for brunch in Manhattan, then went to a matinee performance of Avenue Q. My friends are connected, so they got a deal on the tickets. I was already very familiar with the music from the show, but until a few days ago could only imagine what it looked like on stage. It looks pretty neat in fact. Anyone who grew up watching Sesame Street (or is now raising someone who does), will instantly identify with it.
After the show we had some pretty great Thai food in the same neighborhood. I would even go so far as to say it was as good as, if not better than, Thai food I’ve had in Thailand.
On Sunday we met in Bryant Park, just south of the New York Public Library. We had intended to spend a part of our day strolling through Central Park, but inclement weather put a damper on those plans. We got coffee instead and skipped right ahead to the next item on the agenda, which was the International Center for Photography.
Now, we chose the ICP specifically because it is a museum devoted to photographic images, but didn’t pay too much attention to which exhibits were actually on display. My friend and I are both budding amateur photographers (He is, I should say, much further along in the budding process than I am), and we thought the ICP might prove inspirational. We had no idea what we were in for. The primary exhibit at the moment is Atta Kim: On Air. There were two series of photos in the exhibition. In the first he took pictures using extremely long exposures, some as long as eight hours. In the second, he layered several images on top of each other, like pancakes. By the way, it’s purely coincidence that the photographer is Korean, and my friend and I have both lived in Korea, but we appreciated it just the same. Regardless of his origins however, his work is amazing. I won’t reproduce any images here, but please do see some for yourself. By the way, the images in the gallery were extremely large. It does make a difference.
Downstairs at the ICP, they were showing photographs by a guy named Weegee, who I’ve never heard of before, but who also turned out to be pretty cool. He was not a great photographer in his day, but what he did was take lots and lots of photographs. He documented the everyday lives of a generation of New Yorkers, working classes and racial minorities overlooked by the mainstream media of the day. The best image of the show was a picture of a check stub from Time Magazine reading “Two Murders: 35 dollars.”
So what does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon in New York City? One sees a movie, that’s what one does. After the gallery we caught a taxi to Columbus Circle hoping to make a showing of Half Nelson. Again, an incredible work of art.
You know, I may seem to wax too effulgent in my praise for the things I saw over the weekend. But honestly, people who know me know I’m not that easily impressed. In fact, I kind of see myself as a curmudgeon who constantly looks for flaws and imperfections and ways to be disappointed. Certainly there were flaws and imperfections in everything we saw and did last weekend. The actor who played Brian in Avenue Q did not impress me. There was a major continuity problem in the movie, one of the best images in the photography show was lit badly so it was nearly impossible to see because of the glare. By and large though, the total experience was overwhelmingly satisfying. It was all just that good.
*
After all that art, I was feeling inspired, so I felt like experimenting with my camera a little bit. I'm still learning about my camera and getting comfortable with the settings and the like. I'm just playing for now, but anyway...here's a picture of Columbus Circle, as seen from inside the Time Warner Center using a 1/5 second exposure.
Now here's a similar picture, but this time taken at 1/160. Like I said, just messing around trying to see what effects I get from different settings.
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