The Brooklyn Rail

FEB 2022

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FEB 2022 Issue
The Miraculous The Miraculous: New York

89. 2 Fifth Avenue

Before moving into a new apartment building overlooking Washington Square Park, a photographer and his wife, both Hungarian émigrés, go through every apartment in the still-unoccupied building to find the ideal vantage point for the photographs the husband plans to take. He is looking for a spot far enough away to flatten the field of his images, but close enough to capture, with the help of a telephoto lens, a sense of intimacy. They end up choosing an apartment on the 12th floor, which they occupy for the rest of their lives.

(André and Elizabeth Kertész)

Contributor

Raphael Rubinstein

Raphael Rubinstein is the New York-based author of The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014) and A Geniza (Granary Books, 2015). Excerpts from his recently completed book Libraries of Sand about the Jewish-Egyptian writer Edmond Jabès have appeared in BombThe Fortnightly Review and 3:AM Magazine. In January 2023, Bloomsbury Academic will publish a collection of his writing titled Negative Work: The Turn to Provisionality in Contemporary Art. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art.

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The Brooklyn Rail

FEB 2022

All Issues