{"id":1076,"date":"2010-01-31T00:25:45","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T05:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fredhatt.com\/blog\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2014-12-14T21:21:15","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T02:21:15","slug":"giants-among-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fredhatt.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/31\/giants-among-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants Among Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Princess Pups, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

New York City is the capital of the advertising business in North America so it is to be expected that commercial imagery is plastered everywhere you look.\u00a0 The whole city has attention deficit disorder and all kinds of bids for attention have to be extravagant to be noticed at all.\u00a0 Some of the faces and bodies on the sides of buildings would make King Kong<\/a> look petite.\u00a0 This post is a collection of such giants, all taken during the last decade during my daily travels about the city.\u00a0 On this first one, the face alone is ten stories tall!<\/p>\n

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Towering Redhead, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

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Leggy, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

Computer-printed vinyl banner or wrap technology is the main way it’s done in our era, but enormous figures on walls have been a part of the New York streetscape for a long time, as evidenced by this 1960’s smoking playboy, brought to light when a building that had been covering him for decades was demolished:<\/p>\n

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Smoker, 2002, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

That one’s painted directly on the brick wall, by painters dangling from the side of the building like window washers.\u00a0 The classic craft of the billboard painter<\/a> is rare now but not gone.\u00a0 Hand-painted giants are still to be seen in New York:<\/p>\n

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Heat, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

Here a hand-painted billboard is seen through a fence upon which tiles have been hung in a memorial<\/a> for the World Trade Center tragedy:<\/p>\n

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Stars and Lashes, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

It always seems to me that a huge proportion of these oversized wall images are sexually provocative beautiful people, but maybe those are just the ones I notice.\u00a0 Here’s Hilary Swank swooning like Bernini’s St. Teresa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Ecstasy, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

Male sex gods are always seen towering over this new nightlife area in a part of town that used to be devoted to wholesaling meat.\u00a0 Well, I guess it still is:<\/p>\n

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Meatpacking District, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

And what sells shoes better than foot fetishism on a Brobdingnagian<\/a> scale:<\/p>\n

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Foot Worship, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

I think some of it is just to shock the country people that come to the city as tourists:<\/p>\n

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Reba, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

But surely if you want to cover up an ugly remodeling job on a fancy shopping street, a near-nude hottie will do the trick:<\/p>\n

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Lingerie, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

This example of the same is surely sexual, but what the heck is going on here?<\/p>\n

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Expansion, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s something eerie about colossal figures seen looming behind trees.\u00a0 Here are three lovely examples:<\/p>\n

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Oiled, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

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Adonis, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

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Romance, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

The legendary Plaza Hotel<\/a> is all class, so they shielded their condo conversion work with an elegant and demure giant billboard.\u00a0 Sadly, this development suffered the same fate<\/a> as most of the other bubble-borne building projects of the late zeroes:<\/p>\n

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Plaza Conversion, 2006, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

Huge still images are so widespread in the city that more advertisers are investing in monster-sized video screens<\/a>.\u00a0 This one reminds me, a bit creepily, that we are all under constant surveillance:<\/p>\n

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Big Brother, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

But when I’m stuck in automotive gridlock, a giant cat face cheers me up a bit!<\/p>\n

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Cat Truck, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt<\/p><\/div>\n

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