I · 2Blocks2021

Blocks takes Windows from the single opening to the whole street. One New York city block, photographed in sections and stitched into a single large-format image, facade running into facade.

At that scale a block is a great deal to look at and nothing in particular. Three explorations followed, each a different way of slowing the eye down.

The first is a book: an accordion fold that opens out to the full length of the block, so the street is unfolded by hand, one panel at a time.

The second is a website. The stitched block appears with every window removed, leaving blank openings across the facades. The cursor works as a magnifying lens; wherever it passes over an empty frame, the real window returns underneath. Finding them takes attention, the one thing windows rarely get. Any view can be screen-grabbed, which turns the visitor into the photographer of a window image of their own.

The third turns to an alley inside the block, a gap between buildings. Images from the photographic archive are set into the space: buildings, landscapes, places from elsewhere, each a proposal for what could stand there. A small exercise in the power designers are handed over space, and in how much a choice of image says about whoever makes it.