New York City's Sidewalk Clock
February 18, 2012 | Source: Monroe Gallery of Photography
Ida Wyman: Sidewalk Clock, New York City, 1947
The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951, currently on view at the Jewish Museum in New York through March 25, includes several photographs by Ida Wyman.
Her photograph of the sidewalk clock, located at the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan, was written about in the Photo Hunt blog recently:
"Ida Wyman took great advantage of this unique object for her 1947 photograph Sidewalk Clock, an image that captures the spirit of women's progress in postwar America. In it, a professional woman in stockings and high heels marches confidently across the frame. The woman is in sharp focus, while the enigmatic clock appears hazy, as if it can barely keep pace with her. Wyman herself was enjoying a successful career as a freelance photographer when she took the picture. Following in the footsteps of acclaimed photojournalists Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Berenice Abbott, she published her pictures in popular magazines such as Life, Fortune, and The Saturday Evening Post, an early joiner to the ranks of professional women photographers."