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Sport 35: Winter 2007

Empire State Building

Empire State Building

The shot by Lewis Hine shows a man
sitting on one girder, hands resting on
another, at ease and monarchical
in this the edifice's real King Kong
period (and how much better the ape might
have fared if the landmark had been under
construction). The camera's higher still, the
biplane perspective, and wondrously far
beneath is the city, vertigo like a
pharaoh's curse, a literal downtown which
though gleams softly, almost one could think,
especially with the dark, contrasting mass
of the girders, and as if any fall
would have to be up, unattainably.