Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge, NYC, 2019.

Excessively many pixels, but you can still feel groovy about them, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/48418025131/

#photography

59th Street Bridge

Flickr
This was captured with the Phase One IQ3-100 back, Phase One XF DSLR camera, and the Schneider 80mm/2.8 "Blue Ring" lens. I had planned to use a technical camera and Rodenstock 70mm, providing movements, but a cable was missing from the kit I had with me in the city that night. Fortunately, the 80mm was just wide enough to not require movements, though the Schneider lens renders highlights (as prominent starbursts) a bit idiosyncratically for my taste.

Officially the "Ed Koch Queensborough Bridge" but more generally simply the "59th Street Bridge", the view from Sutton Place at 58th Street on the Manhattan side is probably as flattering and uncluttered a perspective as you'll find for this piece of NYC infrastructure.

Immortalized in song by Simon and Garfunkel, in literature by Fitzgerald, and in cinema by Woody Allen, something about this bridge exemplifies the glamor and bustle of 20th century New York in a way that still holds up.

"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

@mattblaze Vincent Scully on the then new Penn station:

“Through Pennsylvania Station one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

@mattblaze is that the same bridge from Turk 182?
@sdether Indeed it is.
@mattblaze they should have cast Peter Boyle as the major instead of as a detective. He would have made the perfect Koch stand in
@sdether For the perfect Koch stand-in (before he was mayor) see the (original) Taking of Pelham 123.
@mattblaze wow. Lee Wallace is the spitting image. Putting that movie in my queue
@sdether 4 years before he was elected!
@mattblaze also in the theme song to “The King of Queens”
@mattblaze God, I would give anything to shoot with that setup.

@mattblaze For some reason, the name reminded me of a Springsteen song, but that was 57th Street (and honestly forgettable, coming before Rosalita).

But it did make me think that this looks like it would be the bridge the narrator would cross that one last time in Meeting Across the River.

(I know nothing of the geography/bridges of the area, just going from the general feel of the visual)

@mattblaze Matt, this is an excellent shot. Bravo!