Cool Hunting

The midday meanderings of New Yorkers on their lunch breaks, famously captured by Frank O'Hara in his 1964 collection "Lunch Poems," are the inspiration for "Manhattan Noon," the first large-scale New York presentation of works from Gus Powell.

When writing his book, Frank O'Hara would step out of his mid-town office at lunch time and walk his way to the Olivetti typewriter showroom where he would quickly write a poem about "the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon." Powell took to leaving his own midtown office where he was working a full-time job to make photographs of the seemingly insignificant moments that he encountered on the street.

"Some days I had a few hours and other days I had fifteen minutes...but each day I wanted to make something. This meant that my sensitivity was turned up...whatever that tick it is that one feels which inspires them to raise up the camera...it had to be sensitive to far less of an 'event' than it would have been if I had all day to go out and make pictures. This directly led me to try and make pictures that were really of nothing at all. Where a “narrative event” might usually be something to want to point the camera at...a “light event” or “color event” might be all that the sidewalk would offer that day...and it would have to be enough."

"Manhattan Noon" is on view at the Museum of the City of New York through 16 March 2008. Even better, on Saturday, 9 February, you can spend your lunch hour with Gus Powell at the museum where he will lead a gallery tour of his work.

A book of his work entitled "The Company of Strangers" has been published by J&L Books. Limited to an edition of 2,000 copies, it's available through their website for $25.