failed

This image is a deliberate homage to Giacomo Balla's Fallimento (or Failed, or Bankrupt or Insolvency), his wonderful 1902 semi-Divisionist painting of a closed bank, or closed business, the door firmly barred shut, the panels scrawled with chalk graffiti. Here there's the same sense of a futile solidity in the presence of the door - no longer any real need to keep out, or in, customers or money. This was taken somewhere down by City Hall in NYC - and falls into the category of Signs of the Recession, always a favorite (if decidedly voyeuristic and gloom laden) sport when walking or driving around neighborhoods. Hard to locate many other obvious signs in NY itself, today (though there were a large number of empty businesses visible as New Jersey Transit trundled through Rahway). There was, however, an only-in-New-York man trying to make a quick buck by appealing to the tourist dollar, strolling up Broadway with an apparently quite happy, very sleek, black and white cat sitting on his head.

Or, given the reflections, and the way in which the door panels refract light rather like a carefully inlaid, trompe d'oeil Renaissance door, and the verdigris, and the mottled textures, this could be seen as completely lacking in topical thematics, and as being simply another example of my fascination with the

(thank you, bridge at New Brunswick station).