Sheila Metzner - Fine Art Photography Gallery

Notes on NEW YORK 2000

Like many New Yorkers, Sheila Metzner has always felt a certain proprietorship over her beloved city's bridges and skyscrapers. "I own the Brooklyn Bridge and the George Washington Bridge," she declares, only half in jest. "This is my New York. It glows. And it has no people in it because it's mine."

Bravura aside, Metzner was at first reluctant to photograph the great Manhattan landmarks: "I found it daunting and didn't know that I could contribute anything to what [Berenice] Abbott and [Alfred] Stieglitz had already done. But when I got up high to take the pictures, I discovered that the landscape had grown as naturally as an anthill—brick by brick, it had become the wonder of the world."

During her month-long quest to document this great human accomplishment, Metzner's passion for the city reached an apex: "By the time I was through, the city had already changed," she says. "It was as if magic was happening; then it was suddenly over, like a love affair." The affair lives on in these photographs.