For many, fall in the city is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it means relief from the sweltering heat of summer, cozy knits, decorative gourds, and a spectacular show of colors on the trees. On the other, it heralds the dreaded arrival of winter, with its scant hours of daylight, slushy streets, and freezing temperatures. In this week’s cover, Christoph Niemann captures that fleeting moment when New Yorkers are treated to early fall’s crisp light and showy foliage.
Many cities have parks, but Central Park is special. How did you capture its unique essence?
I love the New York City grid. My favorite thing about Central Park is the shape—a perfect, large rectangle. (Golden Gate Park in San Francisco comes close, but it still has some odd angles.) In the summer, it’s easy to forget that one is in the middle of a city, but I love the moment that I chose for the image, when the silhouettes of all the tall buildings around the park slowly emerge through the trees.
You condensed a pedestrian into a remarkably small number of pixels, and his dog into just three of them. How did you pull this off?
I start the drawing by setting up a tiny Photoshop document. (For those who are familiar with the software, this one is only forty-four pixels wide.) With such a coarse grid, it’s very difficult to draw recognizable objects. I try to squeeze in as much as possible by arranging elements of the image in context to one another. The tiniest changes make a huge difference. If I had placed the same dog next to the person, it would look twice as big—if I moved it up, where the street is, it would be a grizzly bear with an orange T-shirt.
You used to live in Brooklyn. Did you and your family make extensive use of the parks there?
I loved to run in Prospect Park, and the kids enjoyed the small zoo there (probably as much for the bus ride to get there as for the animals). And, of course, I can’t forget the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, which inspired the image above.
Which city do you enjoy walking in more, New York or Berlin [where Niemann now lives]?
Walking through New York gives me a unique rush. I would regularly walk from midtown to Brooklyn and be transported back to when I was twenty-four and discovering the city by myself. Berlin doesn’t have anything that compares to Times Square or the Brooklyn Bridge, but I do enjoy walking for miles on the curvy bank of the Spree River from Museum Island through the government district all the way west.
See below for more of Niemann’s plays with abstraction:
