Gramercy Park, NYC, 2020.
All the pixels, but only available to residents who paid for keys, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49594943761
#photography
Captured with Phase One XT IQ4-150 and the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digraron, a sharp ultrawide angle that accommodated just enough shift movement to compose this frame. Captured from the now-shuttered Gramercy Park hotel, on a fittingly grey and joyless winter day.
The wide angle and high, single point perspective emphasize the dominance of the private, locked park’s local footprint. Rather than creating public space, it seems to elbow us aside.
Gramercy Park, which sits between Lexington Avenue and Irving Place between 20th and 21st Streets in Manhattan, is a locked private park. At the center of the park is a statute of Edwin Booth, a 19th century actor today best known for being the less murderous sibling of John Wilkes Booth.
Only residents of the surrounding buildings are issued keys. There are a lot of rules, including against photography, so this is as close as we get. If you have to ask, you don’t belong. Go away.
@mattblaze@federate.social And if I recall correctly, the location of the last tree(s) in Manhattan per the film Soylent Green.
@mattblaze@federate.social when did they shutter the Gramercy Park? We stayed there probably around 2012ish moving my daughter into NYU’s Gramercy dorm.
@peteds@gardenstate.social It was just closing up in 2020. Didn’t survive the pandemic.
@mattblaze@federate.social ah, if memory serves me, interesting neighborhood.
