I have read it as fact, that the early settlers were not seen arriving in their boats by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, because you can’t see what you don’t know. [the theory is that the shaman, better attuned to observation, saw the ripples in the water and reasoned that ripples were indicative of something afloat – as it were] [which brings to mind that pain is not the disease, but an indicator, but I digress!] Inside the 14th Street Subway station of the ABC and L lines when you begin to look, you see small scale statuettes placed oh-so-obviously that how-did-you-not-see-them-before. I didn’t see them until a friend who knows everything about New York pointed them out. Now while photographing them for you, I inadvertently introduced others to them
. This is all to say that many subway riders rush, walk, pass through this station and never see these small figures at all. One of the larger ones is an alligator coming out from under a manhole cover and grabbing a small man by the back of his coat.
Most of the small men remind me of the early monopoly male figure that appears on those cards that sit on the board. There is a small person working his way along a steel girder, next to the stairs and above the platform.
Another is asleep under a protective railing. One sits atop another man reading a book, on top of the newel post of a different stairwell. One of my favorites are the two persons crawling under the entrance gate, only to find a ‘copper’ waiting for them on the inside. Busted. The one that sits on the bench where the trains come and go is shiny from all the pats on the head. The artist is Tom Otterness, commissioned to create them, and they have been in place since 2002. Anytime of day, a special visual.