Escalators in Kowloon Tong Station Hong Kong
This is one of series of postings flowing from our trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam between December 15, 2008 and January 7, 2009.
During my visit over the last three weeks in Hong Kong I was on more escalators than in my entire existence. This reflects the well known verticality of both the natural and built environment there. It also shows the city’s interest in maintaining foot traffic as a viable mode of mobility. Even in the more remote parts of the city, pedestrian travel is aided by sidewalks, elevated walkways, and everywhere a web of pedestrian friendly access connected everywhere by escalators.
Compared with the chronic outages of service on the MBTA escalators, I never came across a single escalator that was out of service.
A final little reminder of the more typical lack of reliability of public escalators I experience in the US came on our return at Newark. After clearing customs we rounded a corner to see an escalator to carry us upstairs to catch our connecting flight to Boston. Sure enough, this escalator, a “Schindler” was emitting a loud clanking sound. We had seen plenty of Schindlers as well as Otis escalators in Hong Kong. None greeted us with such dramatic evidence of imminent failure.
1/15/02
October 2, 2001 – January 21, 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Karen and I saw a few of Ms. Ristelhueber’s photographs a couple of years ago at the Museum of Modern Art (New York). They were part of MOMA’s annual New Photography selections. We were struck then by the power of her work.
The current exhibit, Sophie Ristelhueber: Details of the World, at the MFA includes “Fait”, 71 approximately 4 ft x 4 ft photographs taken in the deserts of Kuwait shortly after the end of the “Desert Storm” war. Some are taken from a helicopter and others are at ground level. All are intensely detailed but in some strange way quite abstract in their impact. This is accentuated in the exhibition by the juxtaposition of aerial and close-ups so that at first glance one can not be sure which is which. This is the scene of modern warfare.
Another series of photographs entitled” Beirut” are 31 small black and white photographs of a streetscape in war torn Beirut. Another confrontation with the results of war.
There is more here in this extensive exhibit. We highly recommend it.
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Every One, #3, 1994 Black and white photograph mounted on fiberboard 106 x 71 inches, unique installation at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht.
(Picture to left and text description above borrowed from MFA web site 01/15/02)
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