My Trip to See The Gates

Last year, in February, I was in New York City, in Central Park experiencing and photographing a temporary art installation called, The Gates. The art was the latest project by a couple of artist known only as Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Christo is often the better known of the couple and many art students might recognize him as the guy who wraps things. I learned about him years ago in a contemporary art class and I remember being a bit puzzled by his work. What I eventually found out, like everyone else who has actually experienced their work, is that talking or learning about their work is irrelevant to the purpose of their work. Only when you see it and walk in an environment where it is, can you understand it, though understanding too, is irrelevant.

My decision to fly to New York to photograph these strange Gates was a bit impulsive. My mother had just been diagnosed with cancer, a tumor in her esophagus. It was early in a game that turned out to be too short and very intense. She had only undergone one chemotherapy treatment and was just beginning to endure the torture that are the side effects. My sister, Michelle, a nurse had flown in from Chicago to help Mom get through her treatments.

I was watching television one morning and I saw a segment on the installation of The Gates in Central Park. The Gates were 7,503 individual pieces; vinyl frames, set in steel bases where huge pieces of nylon fabric hung down. They were placed in sets of varying distances over 23 miles of walkways in Central Park. I looked at the images on television. That color, bright orange or saffron, as they called it. The repetition. I had a fascination with photographing repetitive things. The fabric, flowing and undulating in the breeze. I wanted to see it. I told my husband, “We might have to go see that,” thinking that it would be there for a year or more. Then they said that it would only be up for 16 days. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to go. The idea tossed in my head. I warned my husband that I was contemplating something silly, impulsive and impractical. Knowing me better than anybody and unwaveringly understanding, he simply told me I should do whatever I wanted to do. Then I remembered that a distant cousin of mine and close family friend, Casey Layfield lived in New York. Casey has always been a part of my life. I babysat her as a teenager and she sang at my wedding.

I called my mom to get her mother’s phone number and before I knew it I was asking her if I could stay at her apartment for a few days. Mom didn’t even have to ask why I wanted the number. She had watched the same morning show and knew exactly what I was thinking. I decided to sleep on the idea, thinking that I would come to my senses in the morning but when I woke up, I wanted to go even more. I was finally convinced by something Jeanne-Claude said during an interview. Everyone asked the usual questions: “Why” and “What does it mean?” Jean-Claude said something like, “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s irresponsible. Art is irresponsible and impractical. We wanted to see this. So we made it.” That was it. I felt the same way. I wanted to see them and photograph them so I booked my flight.

At that time I was completing my last semester at Tulane University College in Biloxi and I was supposed to be finding a job. My mom had made light of her condition and told us that she was going to be OK. Michelle and I had found out the truth from the doctor but the reality had not completely sunk in. Just before I was scheduled to leave, her reactions to her treatments made it necessary for her to be hospitalized. She was having a hell of a time. During one of Michelle and my daily phone calls I discussed canceling the silly trip so I could come and help her. In the background I could hear Mom say, “She better not cancel her trip! Tell her she has to go to New York.” So I went.

I arrived in New York late and took a cab to Casey’s apartment. I was so excited I couldn’t help chatting with the cab driver in a very Southern and very non-New Yorker way. I told him why I had come and when we drove under a bridge in Central Park I saw them in the dark. “There they are!” I said.

The next morning I layered my clothing and packed up my lenses and film. (This was my last major photo shoot using a film camera.) I walked into the park. There they were, rows and rows of orange fabric. It took me a while to take it all in. They were so weird. The color was so foreign. There were moments when they seemed ridiculous, out-of-place and absurd. I began to photograph. I walked and walked, looking up most of the time. I shot several rolls of film and began to get a feel for the best ways to frame them. There were a lot of people in the park. I saw Lennon’s imagine circle. The day was dragging along and I knew I had some OK shots but it wasn’t really happening for me.

Whenever I’m on any kind of photo-shoot, whether it be something I’m doing for myself, a portrait session, a wedding or an assignment, there’s a moment when I know I’ve got something great. There’s always that one shot, or more if I’m lucky, that I know will be great the moment I see it in the viewfinder. Then I take more and more and I’m on a roll and I know I’ve done something special, that I’ve made something beautiful, taken a piece of the world, and shaped it, framed it and made it into a piece that is mine. It wasn’t happening. I didn’t feel it. I was getting tired, hungry and cranky and it was colder than I’m accustomed to.

I sat on a rock and looked around at all the people. My cell phone rang. It was my little brother Michael. Mom wasn’t doing well at all. She was in a constant state of nausea. Her white blood cell count was low. She was weak and heaving violently. The treatment was turning out to be worse than she could have imagined. She was still in the hospital. I looked around at the rocks and the strangers and the orange things everywhere. “What am I doing here?!” I asked Michael, “I should be there with you and Michelle.”

“Mom wants you to be there,” Michael said, “She’s happy you went. She didn’t want you to cancel your plans. Enjoy yourself and you can help when you get back.”

I started to cry. The reality of Mom’s condition, the cold and my hunger got a hold of me and I walked around with my head down, embarrassed that I was sobbing in front of all those strangers. It began to get dark just as I discovered a beautiful statue of three girls dancing in the park. I took a series of black of white photos of them and felt for the first time, that I might have made pieces of art that day. It was getting dark so I called it a day and met my cousin for some Thai food uptown.

The next morning I got up extra early and rushed out the door prepared for a full day of photographing. Everything was covered in white. It had snowed the night before. I had never seen real snow before, being a native of Louisiana. I kept touching it and staring at how it shined in the morning light. Even in the city, it was beautifu

I walked into the park and I stopped when I saw the first of them. The Gates were glowing in the sun and all around them was white, fluffy snow. I didn’t know where to begin. I walked around in a trance smiling and laughing to myself that I was really there to see it. I saw the Gates a new way that morning. They seemed to be alive. The fabric was just translucent enough to glow when the sun was behind them. If you looked up close you could see the texture of the fabric illuminated and shimmering in the sun. The contrast of the bright saffron against the white snow was dramatic. It was a beautiful day and it was still early. The only people in the park were runners, dog owners and photographers like me.

My favorite part about the Gates was what happened when the wind blew through them. The fabric, falling perpendicular to the ground seemed to dance and salute you as a breeze swept through them. They flowed and bellowed in undulating waves. It was wonderful to watch. I looked at them from faraway, lined up like soldiers, from under their majestic waves of fabric, from above them standing on a hill, in straight lines and around curves of paths. I walked along the sidewalks, stopping often to photograph, not caring if I knew where I was or how to get back. Everyone I passed smiled as if we were sharing a secret no one else knew, and we were. We were experiencing a singular moment only available to those people there on that day, at that moment. This was why Mom didn’t want me to cancel. She knew I would feel this way. She knew that moments like this are the most precious ones. She understood what I was looking for and why I wanted to see this.

In my walk of discovery that morning I came upon a young man, sitting on a bench hunched over a journal on his lap. I wondered what he was writing. I didn’t speak to him or disturb his solace but I stole a few pictures of him. I looked beyond him and discovered a little hill in the distance with a cropping of six, exceptionally wide Gates standing alone in the snow, dancing in the wind. I walked up the hill and spent an hour photographing that little group. They played and danced for me and when I didn’t have my eye behind the camera I just looked at them in awe. I didn’t want to leave them. I didn’t want to go home and leave the beauty of those strange objects, the realizations of the musings of two artists, in that space, on that little hill of snow and rock, on that crisp, clear beautiful morning. I savored the moment as long as I could until I noticed another photographer who was patiently waiting for me to finish so he could do the same. I acquiesced and gave up my throne of white and saffron.

A few days before the trip I had met up with another Ocean Springs artist, Stig Marcussen for coffee. I had told him of my plans and he offered to loan me a fish-eye lens. (I still have it.) I got the lens from him the day before I left. It made all the difference in the world.

Reading about the Gates, I had thought that a zoom lens would be needed to compress the space and scale of the sculptures, but the fish-eye was much more useful. I could sit under one Gate, point the camera up and see the ones on either side. From that view, the bottom of the fabric would move around in the rectangular frame of my camera as the wind blew. It was so much fun to watch and photograph.

As the morning turned to noon and afternoon, Central Park began to resemble Disney World with crowds of people flooding the walkways. The magic of the morning was behind me and I began to watch people and use them in my photographs. Everyone was looking up. Kids would jump up to touch the bottoms of the fabric. I heard a plethora of languages spoken. I watched toddlers stare in amazement as they ran under the fabric and elderly couples slowly stroll down the sidewalk smiling. Everyone seemed to be having such a good time.

I photographed the rest of the day, burning through about 30 rolls. I found the dancing statues again and spent some time with them. Then I said goodbye to the Gates, took a cab back to Casey’s apartment and prepared to go home the next day.

My favorite thing about being a photographer is the way it changes how you experience things. I would have enjoyed the Gates without my camera but I might not have flown so far from my home to do so. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to sit on the ground in the middle of a walkway looking up waiting for the wind to blow if I hadn’t had the camera in my hand. The other pedestrians wouldn’t have walked around me with understanding either. That day in the park I remember thinking what I’ve thought on so many other instances when I’ve experienced something in a different way because I was photographing, that it doesn’t matter what the photographs look like, whether anything comes of taking them, whether anybody else ever sees them, because I experienced something in a way that I never would have, had I not been attempting to document and create beauty with my camera.

My mom died on July 29, 2005. Casey sang at her funeral. The days and months after my trip were spent with my mother and my sister in the hospital and at my parent’s home. The joys and pains of the following months are a different story. When we knew that she was dying I picked up a book called, Final Gifts. It was written by a Hospice nurse and it’s about the gifts that can come from experiencing the last days of someone you love. My mom gave us so many gifts in her last days. Things she said. Moments of peace and love. When I look at the photographs I took in New York I think about her and the gifts she gave me as my mother. She always encouraged me to be myself, to follow those whims and impulses that are impractical and silly to others but that often lead to moments of singular beauty. One of the last things she said to me was that she hoped that she had given us the courage to live. I think Christo and Jeanne-Claude would have understood what she meant. ~nly

#Cancer #GatesofNewYork #ChristoandJeanClaude #Art #NewYork #Editorial #CentralPark #Grief #Family #FeatureStory