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.






July 8, 2024 Update:  I see that Carl Schurz Park historian Jeffrey B. Evans had this idea first and took his own matching photo back in 2013. He did a much better job, I think, and the change of scale I remarked on seems far less noteworthy here.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/tlpotr/54491558



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 ðŸ’¯
Blog Post No. 100
Blog Post No. 200:  A Shaggy Dog Story





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