New York Without Us II

2009  16″w, 20″h   collage

Foer came up with the idea for these two works on the theme of a suddenly unpopulated New York City while reading Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us in which he proposes a new way to think about humanity’s impact on the planet by asking us to envision our Earth within days of no human presence. He describes how our infrastructure would collapse and that, for instance, floods in New York’s subways would begin to erode the city’s foundations. Cities around the world would eventually crumble and asphalt jungles would turn into real jungles. Foer presents layers of the New York City and the geological strata underneath it in a formation that calls to mind a cistern or a well.

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• Photography