Arteries of New York City

Check out this short film produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films during the 1940s.
The film shows transportation corridors into and out of New York City, using animated diagrams indicating directions of flow for trains, ferries, highways, tunnels, subways, buses, etc. It provides a unique view, not just of transportation in 1940s New York, but some great aerial footage of the Big Apple before the start of the post-war rise of the modern skyscraper.

There are also scenes of a very crowded Coney Island boardwalk, apartment houses and suburbs, Times Square, the 34th Street subway, Grand Central station, New Jersey ferry boat commuters, The Brooklyn Bridge and much more. You even get a glimpse of the many wharves that once jutted out into the Hudson River from lower Manhattan.

The file on Archive.Org gives the date of its production as 1941, but as some of the comments from other viewers of this clip point out, some images featuring a rocket and jet fighter as well as vehicles that were produced after 1941, can also be seen in the film.

Enjoy.

Friday Fotos – London May Day

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Ah, those were the days. I remember them well, or at least as well as my aging memory is able to recall after more than 30 years.

Back, way back, when I was in my 20s living in London during the 1970s, it seemed as if there was a demonstration taking place there every weekend, and I’m sure I attended most of them. There were liberation struggles in Africa to support; anti-racist protests against home-grown nationalists; support for the burgeoning women’s movement, and of course the struggle to unite Northern Ireland with the rest of that troubled country.

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The series of images captured here were taken around London’s Trafalgar Square in the aftermath of the May Day march that ended there in 2008. To be honest, I had completely forgotten the anniversary, and just happened upon the event as the final speeches were taking place and the crowd was dispersing.

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May Day (celebrated on May 1) is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night (after Saint Walpurga, an English missionary to the Frankish Empire who was canonized on 1 May ca. 870 by Pope Adrian II).

Since the end of the nineteenth century, May Day has also become synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, and the annual anniversary is often used as a day of political protest.

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Now this is more like it! Forget the KISS principle, let’s combine a series of slogans on one placard to maximise the message.

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Luminous New York City

Empire State Building, 2008. By Joergen Geerds.

The photo above is just one of the many stunning photographs taken by German born photographer Joergen Geerds. Joergen now lives in New York City, and is carving out a photographic niche for himself by specialising in panoramic night images of the Big Apple. His website, Luminous New York —Lumin-o-City contains dozens of these images, each of which is available for purchase via the 532 Gallery at 532 W 25th Street, New York, NY.

The images all come in large formats. For example the dimensions for the above image of the Empire State Building in 2008 are 120x72 inches (304x182cm), and are mounted against UV non-glare plexi glass with a rigid backing to keep them from distorting. Prints can be ordered online via the 532 Gallery website.

Joergen Geerds studied photography and design in Würzburg, Germany, before moving to New York in 2000, where he worked for several years as an art director in the advertising world. Inspired by the grandeur and grime of New York City, Joergen branched into panoramic photography in 2006.

To quote from his website: During this time, he refined his love of wide-angle photography and ventured into the world of panoramas. He found the un-cropped cityscapes that his flattened, 360-degree photos revealed were unique in the market. This led him to develop his own distinct style—large-scale, hyper-wide night panoramas of New York City.

Joergen documents his ongoing panorama work on his blog at New York Panorama, and his dedicated fine art photography can be found at Luminous New York.

Thanks to the Thumb Press website for bringing Joergen’s images to my attention.

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