Another whirlwind trip to the US

Sorry for the absence my dears!

Here is a brief synopsis of my last three weeks:

Week 1
Decide I need to take a spontaneous trip to New York to follow up on some job leads. Cue a crazy week prior where I'm trying to organise as many meetings as possible, and also keep my Real Life (RL) work moving along smoothly.

Week 2
Fly to New York. It's all so sudden hardly anyone even knows I'm away. Get incredibly lucky and have V's West Village apartment all to myself while she and hubby C are in Poland for a wedding. (You can check out her blog here.)

V and C's delightful West Village apartment

Spend most of the week looking at the inside of flurescent-lit meeting rooms, staring out at sunny Manhattan from inside a taxi, or sitting at this desk trying to keep up with emails and RL work.

At least the view from my desk was tree-filled. Gotta love the West Village.

Week 3
Return  to Melbourne. Back in the office, working hard to try and catch up lost time from being away. Find out I need to have some weird eye tests done, which leave my pupils dilated like Puss in Boots from Shrek below.

I felt as pathetic as he looked, and couldn't do any work for the rest of the day. Usually my approach to life is more embodied by this posture:

Now I'm just trying to catch up on everything that happened while I was out of town (including my very best girlfriend getting engaged!)

Thank you for your patience, regular programming should resume this week - including a post with some tips and tricks about how to manage overseas job interviews. And some slightly sexier photos of New York, which won't include Pixar animation characters.


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Miru Kim: Reclaiming New York's urban underbelly

My little sister N recommended I check out this TED talk a week or so ago, from the TED Under 30 Series. 

We were on the phone chatting about New York, and somehow got onto Miru Kim, a photographer who takes self-portraits of herself in deserted urban environments. Kim lives in New York, and after moving to the city to attend Colombia University, she began exploring and photographing the abandoned aqueducts, factories, hospitals and subway tunnels that exist in the underbelly of New York City.

The images she was producing felt lacking of some human element, and so she started taking self-portraits, with herself as part of the environment. She decided to photograph herself naked, so that the images would be "without cultural implications or time-specific elements".

I've included some of my favourites below. They are haunting.

Old Croton Aqueduct, the Bronx, New York

Freedom Railroad Tunnel, New York

Freedom Railroad Tunnel, New York

Glenwood Power Plant, Yonkers, New York

Coney Island Nursing Home, Brooklyn, New York

Revere Sugar Factory, Brooklyn, New York

If you visit the series, called Naked City Spleen, at Kim's website, each image is accompanied by a short essay on the history of the location the photograph was taken. It makes you realise how quickly everything around us could fall into disrepair. 

As Kim laconically described her encounters with homeless men in deserted subway tunnels and her wanderings through the off-limits areas of the catacombs in Paris, I began to reflect on the courage that must be required when putting together a photographic shoot such as those above. I'm so pleased she does, because I love the photographs, but goodness knows I wouldn't be brave enough.

I wonder if these are the ten steps Kim goes through each time she takes a photo:

1. Find abandoned urban location. 
2. Navigate through the dangerous wasteland, trying not to catch tetanus from metal scraps.
3. Don't freak out when a rat or bat or fierce-looking stray dog appears.
4. Does it smell awful, perhaps from the open sewage pipes nearby? Not a worry, just wear a face mask.
5. Select a suitably impressive and artistic setting for your photo shoot.
6. Are you sure it's not too easy to get to? Maybe you should climb up higher onto that precarious-looking ledge?
7. Okay, time to get naked. Don't worry, at least you are all alone. Or are you?
8. Say cheese for the camera!
9. Pack up and wrap up - it's cold in the urban wastelands.
10. Your work here is done. Hightail it home to a hot bath.

It both amazes and awes me that there are artists willing to put themselves through such experiences so we can benefit from the end result. We are forever grateful.

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Pre-emptive nostalgia

Now that my relocation to New York is becoming more and more real, I'm starting to get sentimental about Melbourne.

I've only been living in Middle Park for just over four months, but I'm completely taken with this little suburb that I used to refer to as part of "Melbourne's public transport black hole." I suppose when you live in South Yarra it's a pain to get to Port Melbourne / South Melbourne / Middle Park, but when you actually live here you can get to the rest of the city just fine. Apart from South Yarra, which is still hard to get to, but I don't need to go there much anymore, anyway.

Yesterday morning I dropped down to the Armstrong Street shops to pick up my dry cleaning and some milk, and snapped some shots of the houses along the way. How incredible was the weather this weekend?!

Middle Park is full of gorgeous terraced homes with wrought iron facades, and apparently is one of the most expensive suburbs per square meter in Melbourne. (I rent here, so it's still affordable. Everyone else who lives around here falls into the category of I'm-a-lawyer-with-two-kids-under-the-age-of-five-and-I-buy-organic.)

Terraced houses and picket fences

Wrought iron frontages

Super posh - check out the angels above the arches.

Some places have cobwebs around the edges, but it doesn't seem to detract from their charm.

Australian date palm taking over the front yard... We have a couple of these in my family home. They are HUGE.

The corner of Canterbury Road and Armstrong Street, with Penny Farthing Cycles and the Middle Park Hotel in the background. This place is just too cute, seriously.

I think I'd like to live here again when I come back from my overseas adventure. Perhaps by then I'll be ready to join the ranks of the shiny-married-couples-with-children-so-adorable-you-could-eat-them. Perhaps.


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