Ghosts

Some of the specific thinking behind these images emerged in 2004, when I was fortunate to be in Rome as a Fellow of the American Academy . My project, which initially focused on individual buildings, had to do with the interaction of geometry and topography in architecture. I began to look at such interactions at a granular scale, focusing on infrastructure. I took hundreds of photographs of remarkable drains and channels in streets and courtyards, which speak to the role storm water can play in shaping urban space.

When I returned from Rome, initially I felt as if there wasn’t much to photograph in New York City. A few years later, I was struck by the way in which what seemed to be defunct manhole covers were fit into granite sidewalks in downtown Manhattan. Surrounding each one was a channel incised in the stone paving, articulating the cut as more than a casual disruption in the ground.

Without knowing their function or having a name for them, I started calling them “cuts and patches,” since they shared: 1) a channel incised around a hole cut into the stone slab of sidewalk, (for access to something below), and 2) a patch over the hole, evidence that they were no longer active.

What interested me about these artifacts was the channel itself, whose shape varied: some are like teardrops or balloons, or targets, some like pitched roofs. Some float within a slab of paving, while most extend to the curb. Some possess a sculptural quality, some a lightness of spirit not usually associated with infrastructure.

At first I thought that the cuts were signatures and in a way they are, but I realized that their primary function was to divert storm water runoff away from the hole. While the function of the channel was to divert water, it also framed the hole: recognizing, acknowledging, situating, and protecting this disruption in the ground. Cassim Shepard and Varick Shute at Urban Omnibus, who interviewed me about the photos, figured out that these artifacts were coal chute covers.

These images and the artifacts themselves – the drainage channels incised around moribund coal chute covers--make palpable the difficult-to-keep-in-mind fact that the ground is constructed. They also make tangible the particularity and diversity of urban places, including the fact that, in Tribeca and other previously industrial areas of the city, the ground is hollow, that these sidewalks, slabs of granite, 6’ x 8’ and larger, are not resting on solid earth, but rather operate as roofs for interior vault spaces below.

At the same time, they are ghosts. These elements of city nature spaces, which are disappearing everyday, contribute to the beauty of everyday space, yet are not recognized as doing so. The fact that none of these artifacts is active endows them with a kind of muteness or opacity. Yet as weathered traces, they register difference: different eras of construction and settlement, the movement of water, the movement of pedestrians. Their mysterious presence adds to their poignance, and to the texture and diversity of our constructed ground