Skyscraper is an English word for “mainmast”. The foretopman climbed on the
spars for maneuvering the sail and scan the horizon.
As the mast scraped the sky
looking for wind for the boat, the sailor scraped the space between the sky and
the sea for the crew, alone.
The modern skyscraper is a building conceived because of urban concentration and the reduction of available space in high commercial value areas.
Basically, it is meant to save space. But a skyscraper is also something beautiful, in the most simple and immediate sense of the world. It’s the skyscraper that makes Manhattan something special. To walk in the crowded streets downtown is to move across the shadows of those geometric giants, who both crush and elevate our standpoint. Then, it feels natural to go up on them. Tourists climb the floor as the sailor climbed the spars. What they’re looking for? What are they scraping? The last floor of a skyscraper is a very personal kind of public space.
The modern skyscraper is a building conceived because of urban concentration and the reduction of available space in high commercial value areas.
Basically, it is meant to save space. But a skyscraper is also something beautiful, in the most simple and immediate sense of the world. It’s the skyscraper that makes Manhattan something special. To walk in the crowded streets downtown is to move across the shadows of those geometric giants, who both crush and elevate our standpoint. Then, it feels natural to go up on them. Tourists climb the floor as the sailor climbed the spars. What they’re looking for? What are they scraping? The last floor of a skyscraper is a very personal kind of public space.
Unexpectedly, the objective experience of the metropolis becomes something deeply intimate. Kids are astonished, old people tend to isolate themselves, most of the people take pictures while ensuring that no other human contaminates the strange geometry of the picture.
And then there’s me, taking pictures of them taking picture of the space, and the space they’re taking picture of while I take picture of them. There’s something stable in these tensions. It’s something harmonious somewhere between angst and calm, rationality and its limits, as if in this perfect geometry we were a necessary imperfection. This is the space I wanted to photograph.