asphalters

Asphalt is a strange weird. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, always a good idea...

It comes from a Greek word asphaltos which means to secure or make firm. I came across this image from Stieglitz in a book I found on 17th St. yesterday, Reading American Photographs, by Alan Trachtenberg, published in 1989. I should read the book but instead I simply look at the pictures.


















Today while scuttling down Prospect Avenue in our stupid amazing minivan we saw smoke in the distance which at first looked like a car on fire, but when we got close we saw it was asphalters at work in front of the nearly finished building called Le Parc Maison on the corner of Prospect and 11th Avenue. For synchronicity's sake we took our own asphalt pictures, my son and I. Well I took some and then he asked to, and his came out better than mine so that's the one you see above. I don't like to let him take pictures very often because it's already apparent that he will be a better photographer than I. Sadly, by the time we got there to take the shots, the obnoxious fumes had disapated and consequently our photo lacks drama.

A little later we passed by a truck of sod. Sod is compelling. It was a nice follow up to the asphalt, another compelling substance. The coolness and freshness of the grass and soil a nice refuge from the noxiousness and heat of the asphalt (called bitumen in other countries.) I read (guess where!) that it was used in the mummification process in Ancient Egypt.