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Gramercy Park, NYC, 2020.
More pixels than non-residents are entitled to see at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49594943761
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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.
The 23mm lens I made this with, the widest sharp lens they make for this camera system (roughly the angle of view of a 16mm in 35mm terms), was recently in the shop for a few months, and I felt like one hand was tied behind my back. It's my go-to lens for so much.
(I can also fit a Canon 17mm shift lens with an adapter. Its full image circle just covers the 645 frame, but it's nowhere near as sharp as the 23mm Rodenstock, especially off center. The Rodenstock really spoiled me.)
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.
Walked by it every day on my way to school as a child. One day, I found a gate ajar and went in. Questions of morality aside, it was beautiful and its air rarified.
@[email protected] It's beautiful, but in a very fussy, formal way. I've been in there a few times, and every time I was worried I'd accidentally break something, like I was surrounded by priceless, fragile antiques.