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City of Sound is about cities, design, architecture, music, media, politics and more. Written by Dan Hill since 2001.

Celluloid Skyline

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Dan Hill

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Wow. Celluloid Skyline is a quite lovely presentation on imagined New Yorks, based on the book of the same name, by James Sanders:

"Celluloid Skyline is an exploration of two cities, both called New York. The first is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The second is a mythic city, so rich in memory and association and sense of place that to people everywhere it has come to seem real: the New York of such films such as 42nd Street, Rear Window, King Kong, Dead End, The Naked City, Ghostbusters, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, and Do the Right Thing. A dream city of the imagination, born of that most pervasive of dream media, the movies."

Having a click around, though, I find it all a little closed, and actually a little bare. There are so few examples, given how the blurb indicates how rich the imaginary New York is (for each movie mentioned on the site, there are a hundred more not mentioned, never mind books, music etc.) The nav is a little basic (not in visual design which is sumptuous (though in classic Flash styling) but in the paucity of facets one can browse by.) Frames make it difficult for me to easily give you some decent links, though check the actuality films. These are always worth a look. Utterly affecting. Like ghosts.

Ultimately, this is a fine repository of quite stunning reference photographs and wondrous early films of a delirious New York, though again, surpassed by the likes of Berenice Abbot’s Changing New York. For example, can there be any better photo than this: Seventh Avenue looking south from 35th Street. Dec. 5, 1935? Still, I’ll chase up Celluloid Skyline the book …

The reason I might sound a bit curmudgeonly is that I’ve been involved in this kind of work before, helping curate the ‘Imagining the modern city’ exhibit for Urbis museum in Manchester, UK, and I can think of no more exciting subject matter. So, I intend to start a separate blog here (maybe wiki?) around this area, based on my initial research for that project (which identified hundreds of examples), but which can accrue further examples of imagined cities through some open, collaborative process.

Celluloid Skyline [Flash]
[via Pete Marsh – thanks!]

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4 responses to “Celluloid Skyline”

  1. juniorbonner Avatar
    juniorbonner

    A new Blog! Bring it on!!

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  2. James Sanders Avatar
    James Sanders

    Hi there — and thanks for your kind words about my site. I’m wondering, because you made no mention of it, if you took advantage of the “rollover” function, which allows you to access hundreds of pop-up boxes that tell you the “story” of each building, landscape, and feature in almost all of the photographs?
    We also went to some lengths to not duplicate the book itself — which treats about four hundred New York films — on the site. So yes, by all means, check out the book itself if you’d like more coverage of individual films.
    Best,
    James Sanders

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  3. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Good point, James. There are some lovely bits of detail hidden within the photographs (though the problem with using rollovers is that the detail may remain just that – hidden.) But yes, I’ll go back and explore the photos for sure.
    I can also see the point of not duplicating the book. I’ll check that out too. The site leaves me wanting more, which ain’t bad.

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  4. James Sanders Avatar
    James Sanders

    Well, Dan, it’s a good signal to us to make the rollover function more obvious, which we’ll certainly do. But there are actually about 30,000 words of text embedded within the 110 images, so take your time — it’s pretty dense.
    As for the rest, I strongly suggest that you (and anyone else interested in this subject) run out and get the book, which took me twelve years to write and will, I think, be of enormous interest to this cohort. For U.K. folks, I should mention that it’s been published there by Bloomsbury, and should be pretty easy to find in London stores. A paperback edition (“popularly priced,” as they used to say) is now out in the States, and will be published in Britain next year, I believe.
    Anyway, your site is marvelous, and I look forward to wandering around some more — and perhaps posting about some of our newer work here in New York.

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