Photo: Self Portrait in Tower 7, Larry Silverstein’s Office, 9.11.2011.
Sometimes, the light is right and the Manhattan grid finds itself aligned with the rays of the sun as they shine down from the sky above on one tower standing alone. This is New York. Record scratch. Say what? It’s uncanny how absence becomes the presence of the erased. Once there was two. Then there was none. Now there’s one. It’s hard to know what to make of it.
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New York is a city that proves the only constant is change, and if you live here long enough, it becomes the height of surreal estate. Take the neighborhood of Tribeca, the triangle below Canal Street. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was a bustling commercial center for industrial business. But the 1960s, most businesses had left, and Tribeca emptied out into a gorgeous ghost town. Attracted to light and space, artists soon found themselves with incredible lofts for living and working. As with the path of gentrification, soon thereafter the wealthy capitalized on the developments made, turning Tribeca into downtown’s most exclusive zip code.
The Drone & the Jenga, Harrison St, 2015
Until 9/11, that is. Then all bets were off. To live within the immediate radius of the terrorist attacks was to wake up in war zone, every day for months. The inconceivable had occurred and nothing would ever be the same.
For the past 22 years, American photographer and activist Donna Ferrato has been living in Tribeca, photographing the world in which she lives. Since 2008, Ferrato has been publishing biannual 10013 portfolios, each released in an edition of 13 boxes containing 13 prints. A selection of the work is now on view in Donna Ferrato: Tribeca 10013 at Leica Store Soho, New York.
Andrew coming home, Leonard St, 2014
The late photographer Mary Ellen Mark wrote of the work, “This collection of images seem to come from the dreams in a diary.” Indeed, there is a powerful disembodied spirit that floats throughout the work, much like the dreams I’ve had of flying through the city streets. There is an intense sense of the intangible, the powerful vibration of eternity, which imbues Ferrato’s work with the power of the spirits. It is this that makes One World Trade Center so eerie. Ferrato’s Southern skyline of Tribeca, Tower 1, 2015 is a picture postcard of the York of New, the somber insistence of dystopian continuity. Après moi, le deluge it proclaims, because time waits for no one.
Southern skyline of Tribeca, Tower 1, 2015.
As Ferrato’s photographs reveal, Tribeca has risen once again, like a phoenix from the ashes. We see this spirit in Self Portrait in Tower 7, Larry Silverstein’s Office, 9.11.2011. This isn’t the York of Old, the one with artists in lofts reinventing the world. This is New York, a place many only know a skyline with one tower and they love the view. As Ferrato reminds us, there are levels to truth, many hidden beneath the surface of things.
All Photos: ©Donna Ferrato.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
