Dirk van Weelden

1.

This is a photograph of a part of Manhattan. The reconstructed small town brick houses of Greenwich Village are nowhere to be seen. The arrogant reflecting bankbuildings around Wall Street are not visible. The architectural highlights of Midtown, the famous squares, the parks, nowhere in sight. This is one of the areas on Manhattan that seems to try to resemble the New York from the travelguides, but fail to do so. This is the not that old, but tired, ugly Manhattan.

If I was a New Yorker these would be the areas that would give me an sense of home. Meer so than the cityscapes visitors from all over the world praise and love. I would keep silent about it, never point them out, those spots where my sense of home lit up. It would remain there, lying in the street, a unnoticed secret, background radiation. On a clear day I would drive one of those cityscapes in a taxi and take a picture. Like I did last april.

2.

At the end of a day you have walked way more than intended, and the sore feet to go with that, I walked along the East River, close to the South Ferry.  Above me the crs on the FDR, on my left the bank of the river and all around me a quilt of pavement types; tarmac, concrete, cobblestones. At the base of the pylons of the fly over I noticed these rain pipes. They were constructed right above the grills that cover the drains. Rainwater from the freeway can pass here and disappear into the river.

I wanted to keep this image. That whitewash, incapable to stop the spreading of rust. Manhattan is a rusty old elephant, from whom the rain flows into the river.
Here are its hollow feet, hovering over the drains in a delicate gesture.

3.

This eternal brick wall and the ephemeral nature of paper. Rain, storm and the hands of children have worn the epidermis of this building. I think it is a result of perfect porportions that this face gives the impression to belong here. To be the face of this building.

This face is neither old nor young. It has lived. One eye doesn’t come into play, but the other seems strong enough to keep the whole building erect. Its expression is neither angry, sad, proud nor pleading. It is an eye that knows. The mouth is beuatiful and powerful. Must be the mouth of an eloquent man. Even when silent his language demands respects, by the shape of his lips.

I don’t know who he is. It may be that I could or should know this. To me this face, on this brick wall, consisting of tattered paper, black and grey spots, on this quiet cold day in spring, was a monument to all those millions of nameless lives that were lived and ended, here in New York, never described, depicted nowhere.