empire of lights

“Take my Harlem Air Shaft. So much goes on in a Harlem air shaft. You get the full essence of Harlem in an air shaft. You hear fights, you smell dinner, you hear people making love. You hear intimate gossip floating down. You hear the radio. An air shaft is one great big loudspeaker. You see your neighbors’ laundry. You hear the janitor’s dogs. The man upstairs’ aerial falls down and breaks your window. You smell coffee. A wonderful thing, that smell. An air shaft has got every contrast. One guy is cooking dried fish and rice and another guy’s got a great big turkey. Guy-with-fish’s wife is a terrific cooker but the guy’s wife with the turkey is doing a sad job. You hear people praying, fighting, snoring. Jitterbugs are jumping up and down always over you, never below you. That’s a funny thing about jitterbugs. They’re always above you. I tried to put all that in Harlem Air Shaft.” (Duke Ellington in Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya. The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, ed. by Nat Shapiro & Nat Hentoff. New York, 1966)

This picture was inspired by the Duke’s description of a Harlem air shaft (his inspiration). I practically saw the picture in front of me when I read the above lines. It took a while to build this, but here we go … I am so lucky there’s the last chance challenge with the lens-artists.