quelquefois

I went to the MoMA with a friend (and her family friends) on Sunday. Some of my favorite pieces are…First, Vasily Kadinsky’s Four Panels. I looooove his use of color, and how he believed that color exemplifies emotion. He has said, “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with the strings.” Second, Dorothea Lange’s photography is beautiful, and revolutionized documentary style photography. I also love her because many of her pieces are from the Bay Area in the early 1900s, and it’s fascinating what something so familiar to me now looked 60 years ago. She serves as a role model. Third, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (below left). I found this piece interesting because it’s almost identical to a piece by one of my favorite photographers, Ellen Kooi (below right). Observe:

Those are a few highlights of my visit. I really liked the contemporary art exhibits, as well, although some of it bordered on kitsch.

My friend and I had made it to the second floor Prints and Illustrated Books exhibit when I started to feel sore in my entire body. I stretched, and one of the guards came up to me and said jokingly, “There’s no exercising in the museum.” He introduced himself as Nelly. He is from Jamaica, Queens. He asked where I am from, and if I am an artist. I told him I am in New York City for the summer, and that I did documentary style photography, but by no means would I consider myself an “artist.”

“Nah, that’s an artist all right!” He started spewing off names of photographers that I may or may not have actually heard of. I nodded instinctively while he did this.

He told me that I could photograph him playing chess, “a beautiful game,” or even poker. He told me he would show me the real New York, “none of this fancy artsy shit you see ’round here.” He proceed to give me his number and ended with, “You gon’ holla at me, right?”

Now, I’m not naïve to the point that I don’t know what it means when someone gives me a phone number. And believe me, there isn’t a single thought in my head that makes me want to do anything in any horizontal position with him. But what if I did want to see a different side of New York? Could I be making a new friend? What’s the protocol for this type of situation?