In February 2005, I’d been a dad less than a month, but my mom insisted I drive down to New York and join her in Central Park.
For one week only, the artists known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude were unveiling their latest site-specific art installation. They had wrapped European bridges and buildings in vast sheets of cloth, but now, after decades of negotiations with the city and park, they were setting up 7,503 steel gates across Manhattan’s famous public park. From each gate hung a saffron-colored nylon flag. With the trees bare and the winter air clear, the fluttering orange could be seen through the trees everywhere you looked.
At one point, we got on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were able to enjoy the spectacle from that lofty vantage point. Rivers of orange flooded the veins of the park. It was a memorable day, and this tour always brings back the excitement we both felt seeing our favorite landscape magically transformed.
My parents both grew up in Australia and had long been fascinated by New York City from afar. When they moved an hour north up the Hudson, they took every opportunity to head into the city and explore the museums, bookstores, theaters, and Central Park. I quickly adopted my parents’ obsession for visiting and photographing Olmsted’s trails and vistas.
I started photographing panoramas in the 1990s and by the time of this collection of images from Christo’s The Gates, I’d only begun to play with creating tours. I took too few panoramas and the navigation between points is less clear than I’d like (use the map to find every spot). Also, I was still years away from being able to photograph full-360 panoramas (being able to see all the way up and down), and these are only panoramic strips.
Still, as usual, my mom was right that this was too important (and beautiful) to miss, and I’m glad to be able to share my document of that trip.
Related
