Photo: Office Romance, 10:32 a.m. September 17, 2015. Archival pigment print. Image size: 6 x 6 inches; Paper size: 14 x 11 inches.
In 1904, a curious sliver of a building opened on 42 Street, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the new headquarters for The New York Times. The neighborhood was immediately rechristened as Times Square, forever tying the paper of record to the crossroads of the world. In the intervening years, the paper has moved locales, first In 1913 to West 43 Street, and more recently in 2007 to its current home at 620 Eighth Avenue, just opposite Port Authority.
Also: Profile | Thomas Roma: In the Vale of Cashmere
The 52-story tower was designed by the biggest names in commercial architecture: Renzo Piano Building Workshop and FXFOWLE Architects, with Gensler providing interior design. The steel-framed building, cruciform in plan. Has a screen of ceramic rods mounted on the exterior of a glass curtain wall on the east, west, and south faces, creating an intense interplay of light and shadow throughout the day.
Office Romance, 5:39 p.m. October 30, 2014. Archival pigment print. Image size: 6 x 6 inches; Paper size: 14 x 11 inches.
“Architects have to dream. We have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well,” Piano observed. With the New York Times building, the architect created a professional space that was “all about the light, and the vibration of light and shadow,” invariably invoking the creative energies of those who spend their days and nights working within.
For longtime director of photography at the New York Times Magazine, Kathy Ryan, the building became her muse, beginning a love affair that has found its way across the Internet and on to gallery walls. One day in the fall of 2012, Ryan noticed a zigzag of light streaming across a staircase. She snapped a shot with her iPhone, and was instantly hooked. She began coming in early, leaving later in the day, and coming in on the weekends in a quest for the best possible light.
Office Romance, 9:50 a.m. January 21, 2016. Archival pigment print. Image size: 6 x 6 inches, Paper size: 14 x 11 inches.
From this Office Romance blossomed, first as an Instagram account (kathyryan1) with 96K followers, then as a book with Aperture, 2014; to an assignment from the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein to photograph the magazine’s staff and contributing writers and artists for the contributors page; and now with an exhibition of photograph at Howard Greenberg Gallery, now through June 25, 2016.
Ryan’s photographs reveal her love for the form, and the way in which a life in photography has given her eye an edge and a depth that is as rare as it is distinguished. The curious bars of the building’s exterior take on a nourish turn with their high intensity graphics that are at once surreal, psychedelic, and art deco all at the same time. There’s a sense of density in the work, a feeling of compression like if there are walls they would be closing in on you but you would never feel a thing because you’re too mesmerized by the optical experience.
Office Romance, 9:54 a.m. November 20, 2015. Archival pigment print. Image size: 6 x 6 inches; Paper size: 14 x 11 inches.
Office Romance reminds us to start where you are, to be so fully alive and aware that it’s impossible not to fall in love with life.
All photos: ©Kathy Ryan, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
