These three images are 35mm silver gelatin prints that were part of a larger video/performance piece called The Feeling City;
a video projection with live narration.
Everyone watches. I feel guilty for it. Some sort of guilt contracted from too much entitlement. But this is only after the fact.
After I suddenly remembered the story I had briefly heard once, of how my Grandfather’s German Shepherd had been shot
and killed by a sniper during World War II. As a young woman from a conservative upbringing, the idea of stalking about,
stories above the world, knowing that I might intervene at any time with my camera, was tempting, and available.
I sought out every parking garage in the city. The tallest is on Spring Street between 15th and 16th Avenues- twelve stories.
This higher perspective changed the way that I photograph.
Geometry explodes in the viewfinder as everything flattens out. The people on the sidewalks do not walk, they glide on tracks.
Fixated, I watch them and myself glide to work or to school or to the store. I have such a clear view, but I am far away and
alone to the point of extreme discomfort. The glass elevator beeps consistently as it rises smoothly along the outside of the
parking garage. I am being delivered to the rooftop for an hour or so of looking and photographing in the biting wind.
Facing the elevator are double-paned windows with double-lined curtains; some pushed to the sides of the window frames,
exposing dark rooms and light forms, some drawn, blocking my view of the interiors. I quickly release the shutter over and
over when I realize, as the elevator and I whisk by,that there is one person in this column of windows and they are recovering
from something. They are lying perfectly still in bed and have no idea that I am there. At that moment, my thoughts
slingshot backward and I recall every instance of someone I know having suffered. I remember their feet making a tent under
the thin sheet. I instruct the elevator to descend so that I might glimpse my family member in the room again, lying perfectly
still in bed. The muscles behind my eyes struggle to flutter my eyeballs up and down fast enough to read the scene as I travel
down, and when I arrive at the sixth floor, the curtains have been closed.
The next seven times that I return to the location, no one is occupying the room, and there is always horrible rush-hour traffic.
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