Last summer, for those of you who keep track of such things, you might remember an entry I posted about the vanishing of a compelling NYC photo-blog maintained by one Dan Weeks. As I mentioned in that post, I’d first stumbled upon Mr. Weeks’ work (as had several other similarly inclined bloggers) back in 2011. Mr. Weeks’ two sites -– Street View 1982 and Posterous -– documented and showcased his stunning panoramic photographs (such as the one above, click to enlarge) of various Manhattan avenues from long bygone 1982, an era when capturing and producing such images was obviosly a great deal more labor-intensive than it is today.
And then, suddenly, he took it all down without any explanation. All that was left on the web of his work were screengrabs on blogs like Jeremiah Moss’ Vanishing New York and West Side Rag and a few others. Otherwise, it was almost like it had never existed.
I was particularly bummed, as Weeks had managed to capture the front of an old Disc-O-Mat on East 58th and Lexington Avenue that I used to frequent in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Spotting it amidst Weeks' pictures was like stumbling on a photograph of a long-lost friend, as histrionic as that sounds.
As I mentioned in my rumination about it on that post last summer, I still periodically do Google searches, vainly hoping Weeks has re-launched his project. He still hasn’t.
But this week, I seemed to strike oil. I mistyped Weeks as Weaks and up came a curious link.
Highlighting comparable panoramic photo-montages, the Meter Gallery is showcasing (and summarily selling) the work of a Mr. Dan Weaks, blurbing him thusly…
Dan Weaks' world journey began when he was only eighteen, photographing Ecuador's rural marketplaces in a project for the Peace Corps. Since then, he's traveled to fifty-five countries, whetting an insatiable appetite for history, architecture and anthropology.
In the early '80s, Weeks embarked on photographing New York City's streets in panorama. "I thought, Wouldn't it be great to show space as it really exists, to observe all the fascinating details at once?" Weeks recounts. He gathered a crew, mounted a camera on top of a truck, and, inch-by-inch, photographed a thousand blocks of New York's midtown area. "I'm obsessive-compulsive," he explains happily. The images were spliced together by hand and rephotographed to create panoramas as long as seventy-eight inches.
Years later, Weeks returned to the project, using a shutterless camera he built himself. The camera was again mounted on a car; aerial mapping film fed backwards through it at the car's rate of speed. The resulting cityscapes capture a New York City that is oddly distorted, as surreal as in dreams.
Strangely, when you click around on Meter’s pages devoted to the photographer (like when you hit “view bio”), he is then referred to as Weeks. I don't get it.
If you’re as intrigued by the man’s work as I am, I heartily recommend clicking on over to check it out. If you’re interested in acquiring some of his photographs, be prepared to shell out handsomely. Just as one example, his image of 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues circa 1982 will set you back $2500.00.
Now did Mr. Weeks intentionally alter the spelling of his name to throw his blogging audience off his scent?
We may never know.
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