A collection of writings about place space writing and art …
These downtown streets are like broken promises spilling into the surrounding neighborhood. They are like pathways bordering an interrupted fantasy. They are arteries skirting the secrets of pavement. These downtown streets once agleam silent now as a once brief dream. The terrace stroll of shoppers spent cracks run like blood veins through pavement. The streets fall […]
© Matt Weber
Superbly evocative New York street photography by Matt Weber via “Mona Lisa” SOHO 1985 — Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber
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But now it is evening. It is that strange, equivocal hour when the curtains of heaven are drawn and cities light up. The gas-light makes a stain upon the crimson of the sunset. Honest men and rogues, sane men and mad, are all saying to themselves, ‘The end of another day!’ The thoughts of all, whether good men or knaves, turn to pleasure, and each one hastens to the place of his choice to drink the cup of oblivion. Monsieur G. will be the last to linger wherever there can be a glow of light, an echo I of poetry, a quiver of life or a chord of music; wherever a passion can pose before him, wherever natural man and conventional man display themselves in a strange beauty, wherever the sun lights up the swift joys of the depraved animal! ‘A fine way to fill one’s day, to be sure’ …
– Charles Baudelaire, The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (1863) , Translated and Edited by Jonathan Myne, Phaidon, 1964, P 11
Sois
Narrow Lanes
Wide Boulevards
Freeways
Shanties
High Rise/Skyscrapers
Traditional Shop Fronts with Iron Lattice Gates and Heavy Scissor Action Doors
The New Grafted onto The Old …
– Marcus D. Niski, Street Notes, Bangkok, 2015.
Naked Cities Journal 