Frabjous Day! Calloo Callay!

Up early after almost no sleep, and off with Devorah to Times Square and to the International Center of Photography, where we took in as much as we could of the Roman Vishniac and Chim exhibits. She started with Chim, I with Vishniac. Then we took a break and sat in the park for a while. Then two more hours, I with Chim and she with Vishniac. Deeply moving. If you have any interest in how Europe was rebuilt after WW2, how Jewish people rebuilt their lives and communities in Europe and the USA and Israel, how any people subjected to unspeakable trauma starts again, how their children start again: see the work of Vishniac and Chim. In a book, online, any way possible. Google them. Read about them. Vishniac was also a photographer of very small things seen in a microscope: amazing colors and patterns, whorls and intense colors. I was there, filled with gratitude for the work of these two men, and for the kindness of those who made it possible for me to be there.

Around 2:30, exhausted and dazed, we went for lunch at a nearby deli, and then we went to the nearby New York Public Library, which is where Devorah did her homework when she was attending Bronx High School of Science. 

See, in preparing for this trip, I made a list of Vivian Maier shots of New York, and I thought I was going to go to the places she'd been and shoot pictures in those places as a further homage to her. What I've learned is that her work is even more wonderful than I had realized. I can't even come close. But late in the afternoon, sitting outside the NYPL Devorah glanced up at me in a state of frustration because she couldn't get her new cell phone to ring...and I got a shot that's a little closer to what Vivian Maier got than anything I was able to shoot from the bus this morning.

I am a little jet-lagged, a little tired, a little sore of foot, but very happy. The ICP doesn't allow photography inside, though I was allowed the ticket-taker; but they have window displays you're allowed to shoot outside the building. Those are about Gordon Parks and Hank Willis Thomas, and they're wonderful also. My whole day in New York has been photographs, and there are a few more piddly ones of mine on the other place if you want to see them. Next to these greats, I am a little embarrassed even to mention mine.