Joe Abate is a freelance photographer from Long Island currently working for a health organization on Austin Street in Forest Hills. When not working, he often wanders the streets of Queens to capture on camera the neighborhoods he has come to love. He penned the following essay after spending time photographing the morning light on Forest Hills’ fire escapes.
Some people say the sun is brighter in the spring. I do not know if this is really true. I do know I can look at my surroundings once spring is upon me, and I can see things as brighter – more dramatic – and perhaps closer to my sensibilities about the value of daily living.
An example of this is the fire escapes on the sides of the buildings in Forest Hills. As I walk the streets in Forest Hills, the bright sunlight in the early morning offers me highly dramatic, expressive shadows of the iron works of the fire escapes on the sides of the apartment and condominium buildings. As the light moves across these buildings throughout the day, the fire escape shadows move to make new and ever-changing designs throughout the bright morning light. As I gaze upon these metal works, I think about what they symbolize to me.
I remember that in the play “The Glass Menagerie,” the playwright, Tennessee Williams, creates an imaginary world where the fire escape offers a person an exit away from dealing with daily living tensions. It can offer a symbolic escape, and it can be an imaginary ladder for travel to exciting places for the weary person. In a personal way, it can offer a person a chance to find their independence and to explore their creative side. As I looked upon the fire escapes, I wondered if I could capture these ideas in photographs. I looked up at them in the bright morning light and, through my camera’s lens, I was struck with their beautiful form and expressive shadows.
I imagined the fire escapes’ sweeping shadows as a beautiful design for my own imaginary escape. I pondered how people getting up each day must plan and anticipate how their day is expecting to go. I thought about people getting up each morning and how the ever changing morning light must flood their homes with the shadows of the fire escapes. I thought, “Do they see and feel life can be an adventure? Do they know that all they have to do is will themselves to embark on seeing the process of exploring their dreams as a wonderful journey?” Like an adventurous traveler, the fire escapes could symbolize sign posts on the road to personal satisfaction and lifetime fulfillment.
Now I see the fire escapes in a very different way forever. They were built for people’s safety and yet they are also an illusionary object in the sunlight to perhaps transport people to places of adventure that only their personal dreams can explain. I think about the fire escape shadows entering the Forest Hills dwellings. I do hope the people living there can see their first steps to imagination could begin after witnessing these bright spring morning rays of sunlight literally at their window.
