MANHATTAN – Here we are. This is the tenth anniversary of my starting this project on October 16, 2009. A photo every day. Not one day missed. Not one. There were a few mishaps along the way: dead batteries, erased SD cards, misplaced files and the like. But still . . . so far so good. On to my second decade.
On October 16, 2009 I started this project by taking the subway to Wall Street and going to what was then called Chase Manhattan Plaza. There was (and is) a Jean Dubuffet statue there called Four Trees. I found an angle that I liked with my digital Leica and shot four images, all roughly the same. Walking back to the subject I did the first of many “look up” images, showing a long sliver of daylight above the dark canyon formed by the alley across from the Old Equitable Building. That’s it. Day one.
Today I went back to the Dubuffet (as I have on several other October 16s) to take another crack at it. This time I approached it with a couple of hours to burn and tied close, far, context detail, movement, focus, you name it. There wasn’t much I could do with light and shadow on a cloudy day. I waited around for some rain, but it never came. Here you go:
A remake of the 2009 original. Not much has changed, except for the six windows in the wall on the right. The Dubuffet has withstood the insults of New York’s climate and population.
On this date ten years ago (day 1 of one photo every day for the rest of my life!!): Jean Bubuffet I’ve re-edited this image. It was foggier ten years ago.
