Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Blog Post No. 4300: Visiting the Site of Charles E. Martin's New Yorker Cover of April 14, 1973

Fifty years ago this month, The New Yorker of April 14, 1973 featured a cover by Charles E. Martin, or C.E.M. as he signed it. Martin's cover depicted an East River view on an overcast day. A lone bench on the John Finley Walk faces the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse with Astoria, Queens beyond it. The muted colors bring out the blue of the river. Recently, I took a stroll on the Upper East Side to stand where Martin must have stood and photograph the view as he must have seen it. I was off by a few steps, but not much more. 

Charles E. Martin
The New Yorker, April 14, 1972

What I never suspected until I visited the spot was that Martin engaged in a little artistic sleight of hand here. He's enlarged the lighthouse to make it a more prominent form in the cover art. Possibly, he took a few steps back and climbed a few steps up on a ladder to get all that foreground in, or else he just extrapolated the tiles. Whatever the case, he transformed the city view into a compelling magazine cover.

I took a couple of other photos on my excursion, but none have the makings of a decent cover composition.





Note:  Just in case others too are in the habit of photographing real-life New Yorker magazine cover vantage points, please send such efforts to my email address.



The Attempted Bloggery Centennial Posts 💯
Blog Post No. 100
Blog Post No. 200:  A Shaggy Dog Story





04300

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)