The City from Afar

Abstract

This essay focuses on Alvin Coburn’s The Octopus, a photograph of Madison Square taken from atop the Met Life Tower in 1912. Working against the conventional interpretation of the image as a study in form, it approaches the work in relation to a public debate surrounding urbanization in Manhattan at the turn of the century. Read in this context, the image not only chronicles the anxieties of the skyscraper and its perceived threats to health, sociality, and class mobility but also discloses new modes of urban experience that strike a balance between competing forces within this dialogue. In this regard, the image is instructive for contemporary photography as it attempts to engage with the postindustrial city as subject.