The towers of ancient Babylon have become the hundred skyscrapers of Manhattan.
New York: the new Babylon. Dizzying walls plunge into the canyons of the avenues and boulevards. Thousands of panes of glass shine like the sun. One of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, built by man for man.
And here to portray it are the evocative images of John Gellings, grasping the strength and beauty contained and the shadows that create the pause between. Passers-by, alone, fleeting, seem to witness the transitional secret of these prodigious architectures. Manhattan-New York, the stage for these figures with its backgrounds, edges, corridors, surfaces, slabs, overhangs ...
Gellings invites us to journey horizontally through these verticals, a sure sign we will not get lost.
Robert Capa once said: “If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” Gellings took his quote as a challenge to see if he could make photographs from far away (both in proximity and intimacy) and still make compelling photographs.
Batsceba Hardy
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I was born in New Jersey, USA and I lived and photographed in NYC until April 2017. Since then, I have been living and photographing in Santiago, Chile. I graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University, New Jersey) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography in 1998.