Sohei Nishino of Japan made a cut-and-paste collage of many images of NYC and created kind of an “island” – which Manhattan is – with the water bordering all the skyscrapers and busy streets depicted in the middle of the photo. I was quite fascinated by his work on both NYC and Jerusalem, but being proud of the city that I’m from, I’ve gotta stick to attaching a photo of the Big Apple. I haven’t studied the photo geographically and whether all the buildings and parks are in their accurate places, but nonetheless, it’s very visually appealing.

If you look closely, you can see outskirts of central park, the empire state building, the Chrysler building, and other famous parts of the city. I think what perplexed me the most was why Nishino kept the entire collage in grayscale. Surely he had time to visit New York City and immerse himself in the city’s beauty; so why didn’t he capture the image as such? And along those lines, where did he even get these pictures? I began to think that maybe he had a giant horizon view of the city and had never visited; instead, he simply made cutouts of a bigger image that he had in his possession. I quickly let go of my conspiracy theory and chose to admire the artwork in front of me.

Maybe Nishino just wanted to appeal to the average looker. I mean, if someone was to look at New York City’s horizon for the first time (and not be a native of the United States), this person would most likely be viewing the skyline through a picture. A high-definition, 1080 x 720 pixel photo that looks completely real. A photo like that would make someone want to visit the city, not something like this collage. Nishino’s idea is very original, however, and probably cuts out the meaningless parts of the city – the collage gets right into the heart of Manhattan, emphasizing landmark by landmark as each street passes. I wish that the essence of New York didn’t have to rely on Manhattan so much in the collage, though. Focus on Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx… they’re all such key aspects of the city!