1982 had greener grass, I think
Last week I wrote the text for this photo essay in New York magazine about a bunch of different artists’ New York apartments from 1887 to now, and in the process did a lot of thinking about a New York that was dirtier, poorer, and more dangerous but also imminently more livable. My favorite picture shows Cindy Sherman in her bathrobe with her blind pet dove. Originally the dove had not been blind, but became so one day after Sherman’s boyfriend opened the door it was perched on and inadvertently slammed it against the wall. Sherman had not known whether the dove was female or male, but that night, the dove, fumbling around trying to figure out sightlessness, somehow managed to fly up to the boyfriend’s hand, where it laid an egg.
I know that in lots of ways most of the apartments in the pictures were inconvenient and somewhat uncomfortable, lacking, as they were, amenities like hot water or private bathrooms. But man, with their walls of windows and $200 rent and sprawling, endless square feet, at least from the 500 square feet I call home, I just kept thinking that those people didn’t known how good they had it.
