Recently, I visited the 5th Avenue block, between the 18th and 19th Streets. At first, I just took different photos of objects, people, and nature around the block. These were snapshots at every 10 seconds in a minute. Like every block in New York City, this block too had two different sides. One part was crowded with people and cars moving on bust streets while the other starkly contrasted it with its silence and lack of people. The block was filled with shades of green, blue, grey and ochre.
Even though the objects in the first and last snapshots are stationary they still show a sense of rhythm and how overall it forms a pattern showing rhythm in time. When the contact sheet is looked overall, the tiny frames form a sequence and creates a movement for the audience.The snapshot in the middle show actual progression of time as you can see the people moving showing large motion in every 10 seconds.This indeed told a tiny part of the story of a block.
However to tell you the story of the block as a whole, I decided to include certain images from the snapshots and include texts from shops to tell the story.
City Grid
Even though this grid kind of told a story, I decided to experiment using some of the pictures from the grid, but used a linear format.
The second linear story has fewer pictures and the positioning of the squares have been changed. The defending squares on the right show progression of time as the lady is seen moving out of the frame. The audience view the linear sheet from left to right and from one single perspective. However, on the grid the viewers viewpoint can be different depending in what he looks at first.
This final piece depicts four different part of the block. The first and the third collage is the picture are of crowed places while the second and the fourth are of quieter places and zoomed in objects. Through merging different sections and images,I wanted to show how time moves faster and slower. For example the merging of the cars in the bottom left of the strip shoes how time is passing by quickly because the cars move too fast. However, I have merged the railings (on the extreme right) by fading some images into the others which gives a pattern of continuity even if they are the same stationary images.The objects in the second and third collages are something that we will move past quickly while walking in the block and therefore I have used a lot of overlap in them as compared to the first and third one. Since I wanted to show different parts of the block, I used spacing between the 4 different collages to show gaps in time. The use of texts connects the viewers to what I am thinking about the block while they look at the images and create their own imagination.
Here is a narrative about what I saw at the block:
As the sun rises every morning on the Fifth avenue, the rush of people going to work crowd the 18th and 19th streets. The sounding of the rolling car tires is cancelled by the siren of the ambulance passing by and now the little girl puts her hand on her ears trying to prevent herself from listening to the loud alarm. When the ambulance is gone, she removes her hand and goes back to holding her mom’s hand. The 18th Street is a very busy street and is filled with yellow cabs, cars and bicycles and people trying to cross the road even when there is a stop sign. A girl with her dog almost got hit by a car that day! Even though everyone is in a hurry, there is one side of the block that is silent and calm with very few people in the mornings. There is a huge city bikes stand where sometimes people come to collect bikes and ride around the city. Like always, if there is a silent side of the block, there has to be something disrupting the silence. The road construction opposite the garage sounded like a roar in the silent jungle. Green is a very prominent color in this block.The stylized pillars of the building when contrasted against the bright clothes of different people walking by adds to a whole different view of the block. When the clear and calm sky is silhouetted against this busy block show the real beauty of the block is seen with the block as the stage and the people as the actors in the pictures. Each part of the block has a different charm whether it be the high-rise buildings aiming for the sky, the constantly changing traffic light or the empty streets with the smell of Dough Donuts in the air all add to the attributes of this block. These tiny frames of the block add up to create a picture of the block which is different with each passing day.
