Mini Me, New York City

Evolving 3-D printing technology is pretty darn amazing, from household doodads and clothing all the way to houses and body parts. We can’t print full humans— yet—but Doob-3D™ a German 3-D printing company with two stores in New York City and seven more across the United States, promises to capture the real you in a core resin polymer figurine. It’s 3-D narcissism, a “selfie” in the round.

Enter the onsite “Dooblicator,™” which looks a little like an airport scanner, and a few weeks later receive your freshly printed mini-me. So-called Doobs™ range in price from a $99 4-inch “Buddy” to a 14-inch $699 “Diva.” They’re not exactly cheap, but, I suppose, a perfect gift for that person in your life who has everything. Why collect Lalique birds or Herend bunnies when you can gather up your own life stages?

The Upper East Side store features the material timeline of “Heather,” (photo below). You see figurines of Heather pregnant, holding a baby, and then with growing family. Looking at a row of aging tiny Heathers made me feel a little nervous, like pet taxidermy or The Twilight Zone. I can easily imagine a Black Mirror episode where Doobs—kissing couples, siblings off to school, beloved huggable dogs—come alive at night on their little shelves and march off to subsume their flesh and blood hosts.

Creepiness aside, there’s also something sweet and sentimental going on here. Time is a killer beast. Like photos and videos, making your own 3-D Doob is a proud, defiant move. Her children may grow up, marry, and have children of their own. But Heather will be able to hold her unwrinkled pregnant self forever in her hands.

Lit, New York City

In the dead of winter, candles are alive. I light them every morning to wake up to beauty. Outside my window, unbroken grey wraps sky and sidewalk in an enervating hush. The city is in hibernation. At the kitchen table, my slim candle flames dance to their own music. A wax pinecone sinks inside itself, preserving its brown spikes and spirals as it melts. Another, “Feu de Bois” from Diptyque, sends out a wood fire scent. A few are just glass votives, because, why not?

By mid-February, things are looking up. Daylight begins to stretch. Some afternoons are still too grim and dark and cruelly cold. Others hold surprises. Walking in Central Park toward dusk, I see black trees lined up like logs against the urban skyline. Glass buildings shoot gold and orange embers at the sinking sun. Everything is lit. Warmth spreads. It’s a fireplace in the sky, New York style.

Haunts, New York City

One crazy funny-but-true story about the iconic luxury store Bergdorf Goodman is the number of devoted shoppers who want their ashes scattered inside. Of course, you have to do it on the sly. Their dedicated spirit may haunt the store’s interior, but in my mind the outside sidewalks belong solely to the late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.

Cunningham, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, was for decades a fixture on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. He knew it was where the stylish met the fashionable. I would often see him crouched and squinting in his signature blue jacket as he hunted street trends with his Nikon. Now every shot from that location, like this one on pattern-mixing, feels haunted by his legacy.

His single-minded desire to record New York’s elegant and outlandish is shown in the 2010 documentary, “Bill Cunningham: New York” and his recent posthumous memoir: Fashion Climbing: A Memoir With Photographs (Penguin, 2018).

Even though he looked angelic, he could be tough when necessary, as I discovered.

After I was hired at Women’s Wear Daily, I was excited to learn that Bill Cunningham had started his writing career at the paper. Our commonality was only in my mind, though.

One of my earliest WWD assignments was to “cover” a big New York society party. I had to get all the photographed local celebrity’s names spelled correctly and write a column. I was green and new to the scene. We were tucked off behind ropes, and all the photographers were firing rapidly away.

Bill Cunningham was shooting next to me for The New York Times.

“Who’s that?” I asked him as the first beautiful socialite walked by. He told me, quickly. I wrote it down. “Who’s that?” I asked, as the next woman passed.

He paused and glared at me. “Get your own names,” he snapped.

It was a quick lesson in the competitive nature of journalism, down to and including party reporting. And from then on, I did.

Super Tall, NYC

Like its ambitious citizens, the Manhattan skyline is always reinventing itself with an eye to the competition. The newest super tall skyscrapers—some still with cranes—look like fishing lines to the stratosphere. Are they trying to catch birds, helicopters, clouds? Here are views for billionaires (and maybe global criminals) who need to show they are on top of the world. Not just the one-percent, but the one-upper percent—the “my treehouse is higher than yours” club. Like NBA basketball players or super models, the towers look down imperiously on older buildings. The formerly imposing now looks short and squat. But reflected in the dimpled water of the Central Park Reservoir, the Super Talls shrink like Legos and belong to everyone. Nature brings them down to size, and wins.

Pride, NYC

Whistles are a stop sign for the ears. Traffic cops, lifeguards and referees all use them to control the flow of action. But whistles have a happier side, too. A child with a whistle skips to a self-made joyful rhythm. Whistle-blowing can be fun, but it's not always easy. Sometimes it takes deeper convictions than lungs to blow a metaphorical whistle in corporations and government.

The annual NYC Pride March through Greenwich Village has always been a compelling mix of resistance, protest and celebration. The theme of this year's march (June 20, 2018), "Defiantly Different," protested the Trump and other world government administration's ongoing efforts to strip LGBTQIA protections and rights. Serious signs of protest joined bucketloads of glitter, confetti and rainbows on marchers and their floats. 

This large green team from TD Bank walked by tooting their own whistles and handing out free ones to onlookers. I grabbed one as did the people shoulder to shoulder with me. Individually, our tiny shrill exhales were impossible to hear. But all together, we made some damn serious noise. 

In Tent, New York City

Photos of people taking photos are so delightfully meta. But not everyone feels that way. Here, I had to shoot quickly and move on before security could approach. My sidewalk lens was a random element in the otherwise tightly controlled chaos of the star-making machine. The event was the Manhattan premiere of the new hit movie,  "A Quiet Place" (nationwide April 6, 2018) and the see-through street tent with red carpet was erected to create and control visuals of stars like John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. The inside group performed their roles with intensity. Strong men and steel barricades walled off media and stars. Photographers scurried around like they were covering breaking news (though they were actually shooting portraits in front of a logo wall for sites like celebmafia.com and  snowceleb.com). Interviewers got themselves camera-ready in well-oiled motions. Not a hair was out of place. It was all very serious business. The movie made $50 million on opening weekend.

Hung, New York City

I love blank space. To me, it speaks of luxury and potential rather than the absence of things. But is it possible that inside every minimalist there's a hidden maximalist? The trendy gallery wall (above) at the special exhibition, "Forever Young: Selections from the Joe Baio Collection of Photography," certainly called to mine.

The Joe Baio Collection was one of three special collections (also "A Time for Reflection" curated by Elton John and "All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party" curated by Michelle Dunn Marsh) at The Photography Show presented by Aipad (April 5-8) held annually at Pier 94 in New York City. The premiere photo show featured fine art galleries, book dealers, publishers and photography organizations from all over the world in mostly spare and chic grey booths.

Joe Baio, however, opted to create the feeling of a luxe Manhattan townhouse inside the vast pier space. The collectors brought in large oriental rugs, plush sofas, and antique tables and painted display walls in dense red, cobalt and light blue hues. More than 200 photos of children and adolescents ranging from the 1850s to the present were hung in intricate and beautifully executed arrangements. 

Passionate maximalism ruled. People came, sat and stayed. Here,  the fine art of hanging lead to the even finer art of hanging out. 

All Mine, NYC

King of the Mountain is serious business in Manhattan. It's not easy ruling the unruly kingdom (ask any builder or Wall Street trader). Usually, kids are on the losing end of the city's scale. Tall buildings shrink them down to mice. Elevators threaten to eat their tiny hands and sneakers. Dogs bark or growl nose to nose. Even kind strangers engulf like giant lampposts. But every now and again—on a swing, a parent's shoulders, or atop a manmade snow hill in Central Park—perspective reverses. Buildings become Lego blocks. Traffic runs on Matchbox toys. A snowscape becomes a moonscape; the sky tastes like cotton soup. Suddenly, the city is entirely theirs. 

Under Construction, NYC

Construction peepholes are irresistible. For people like me, the chance to watch large machines at work as they dig and move dirt stops time cold. The view is never as surprising and disturbing as Marcel DuChamp's Étant Donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but I always think of that weird and mysterious artwork nonetheless whenever I stop to sneak a peek through a hole in the wall at a building site.

Comic Relief, New York City

What with all the 2016 election craziness, the rampant bigotry and depressing news like this recent study of a surge in opioid poisonings of toddlers,  it's not hard to feel sometimes like an alien in your own beloved country. I literally can't believe my own eyes. So this futuristic big-headed mannequin, seen at Bloomingdale's New York, perfectly captured my November vibe right down to her big saucer glasses. After I played with the shot in Mobile Monet I had my "aha" moment: This is it! American life this election season feels like an out of control comic-book world where good and evil forces battle daily for domination.

Boo!

Is it possible for flowers to photo bomb? I could swear this very urban sunflower found growing on a city rooftop farm is saying "Boo"! I love how a foreground object changes scale and heightens impact. The applied chrome filter reminds me of the heightened realism in a David Lynch movie.  This sunflower is scary, but still a lot nicer looking than the the giant man-eating plant, Audrey II, in Little Shop of Horrors.