the met part une

Spending your days exploring the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the perfect antidote to the heat and humidity of the crowded streets of the city. The subway grates blast up steaming air, blackening your feet. The family behind you walks too close for comfort. You yearn for any open space, not near dozens of people. At times the only respite is the quick second you find yourself by the opened door of a pharmacy or deli, and feel the blast of chill from the a/c inside, shocking your calves, and traveling up your neck. So to arriving at the Museum that is entirely air conditioned, tucked into the east side of Central Park you immediately forget the clothes you've sweat through, and your face adjusts to the crispness of the processed air. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the Met's size, easy to miss the Rembrandt's and skip the Rodin sculptures, only seek out the popular Picasso's and Monet's landscapes. But when you stop and really examine the paintings, read the plaques, get absorbed, and ask questions to the volunteers, the Museum and its incredible inventory of artistic history really gets to you. Here are some pictures from the couple of days my best friend and I spent there. You could easily spend a week there and not see it all.

Francis Bacon triptych. I love the shadows. 

From late spring to the last warm days of fall, the Met has a special exhibit on the roof. Entirely covered in sharply cut grass that overflows onto the walls and railings, it offers stunning views of the tops of the crowded trees in Central Park to the tall buildings lining 5th avenue on the Upper East Side. The green of the grass contrasts beautifully with the structured grays and browns of the buildings. 

The Metropolitan Museum host the Met Gala each May that focuses on fashion and its unique and unmistakable place in the art world. It's a spectacle and remains a colossal colliding of two industries. The stars, the glamor, and of course the fashion are without peer when it comes to social and cultural events in New York City. Last year's theme of Punk was exciting, and even a little scary seeing all the various celebrities attempting to pay tribute to the likes of Patti Smith and The Clash and the usually hostile imagery of the Punk music scene. This year the Costume Institute has done an entire 180 and devoted the Gala and its ensuing seasonal exhibit to the legacy of Charles James and his exquisitely structured ball gowns and clothing from the mid twentieth century. Photography in the hard to find showroom was strictly prohibited, but I risked my life and took some anyway. The exhibit was exceptional in the way it not only showcase the dresses but also the detail, precision, and care that go into the design of each article of clothing. Small cameras glided up and down the gowns, highlighting certain areas with beams of light, moving your attention to a small screen below, where you saw how the garment came together, piece by piece.

the butterfly gown

vintage coats 

some early James sketches

I also wanted to mention Garry Winogrand, whose photography retrospective just opened. It's a remarkable display of black and white candid snapshots of the people of New York, California and Texas. These were all taken between 1955 and 1985 before Winogrand's death. The pictures are funny, intimate, spontaneous and carry a commentary on the attitudes and fashions of the time when they were taken. You can see the peoples faces change as the decades do. Winogrand, who I had never heard of before, was relentless in his pursuit of expressive faces. A street photographer who at the time of his death in the mid 1980s had some 22,000 rolls of undeveloped film. A majority of the exhibit included those developed posthumously. For myself, an amateur who mainly takes pictures of architecture, landscape, and still life, seeing these pictures with their broad range of emotion and complexity coming from strangers I don't recognize and will never know, many who have now since passed away without knowing these photos even exist, gave me a massive jolt of creative energy that I would love to incorporate into my own photography someday. I wish I would have taken more pictures of these pictures.