Sailor, Times Square. New York, 1951.A young sailor in dress blues sits at a lunch counter, and the photograph reaches him down a narrow slot: a doorway with pale jambs pressing in from both sides, and behind that the shop window.
Brooklyn Promenade, Brooklyn, New York, 1954.A bald man in a white short-sleeved shirt has surrendered to the bench, arms flung wide along its slatted backrest, head tipped back, eyes closed against the summer glare.
Saratoga Train Station, 1956-58.What gets you first is the wedge of light — a long slab of cracked concrete platform that runs the whole left edge and tapers toward a vanishing point somewhere near the front of the train.
Downtown, near Canal Street, New York, 1985.The picture splits in two, the seam a low parapet running clean across the frame.
Old rooftop and new building from Broadway, Midtown, New York, 1985.The picture is built almost entirely of one thing: the ribbed flank of a modern tower, a vertical screen of close-set aluminum mullions that fills the frame and runs out both sides.