Luncheon in the Park Outside of the United Nations - Turtle Bay, New York City
An unusual couple, such as is seldom seen outside of New York City, are having a luncheon on park benches outside the United Nations in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. Highly polished formal studio portraits of people in indigenous costumes show an idealized world vision of pre-modern historical cultural expressions that do not really exist anymore. The vision, as stated within the portraits, may have always been a fantasy. The couple express their own cultural role in an significantly more complex and intensely individualistic manner that defies the simple stereotypes of the background images. The red of the woman’s hat and shirt finds color harmonies with the clothing is some of the portraits, but the correspondence only emphasizes the differences between fantasy and reality.