A low central aisle leads through dark wooden pews toward a jewel-colored stained-glass altar beneath a Gothic stone vault.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JINGYI (VICTOR) LIMANHATTAN / NEW YORK HARBOR
MARCH 2023

The city changed its ceiling

VAULT
HORIZON

BONE / NEON / STONE / WATER08
ENTER ISSUE 08 ↓

11 PHOTOGRAPHS · ISSUE 08

First, the city
closed overhead.

A museum skeleton supplies the first architecture. Times Square replaces bone with electric color, then a church gathers the noise into stone, walnut, and stained glass. The final movement opens all at once: winter-blue water, the lower Manhattan skyline, and Liberty held at a distance.

MANHATTAN / NEW YORK HARBOR · BONE / NEON / STONE / WATER
A mounted dinosaur skeleton arcs through a dark museum gallery above a visitor standing in its shadow.
01MUSEUM DARK
A visitor stands beside a Tyrannosaurus skeleton in a bright museum hall filled with suspended globe lights.
02MUSEUM DARK
Times Square billboards surround a dense night crowd beneath a broad interval of black sky.
03ELECTRIC SQUARE
Magenta and cyan Times Square screens hang above moving traffic and a packed pedestrian plaza.
04ELECTRIC SQUARE
A man in a white sweater stands still in Times Square while pedestrians blur around him.
05ELECTRIC SQUARE
A seated visitor looks toward a stained-glass altar beneath the high stone vaults of a New York church.
06THE VAULT
A low central aisle leads through dark wooden pews toward a jewel-colored stained-glass altar.
07THE VAULT
Stone ribs, hanging lanterns, and bright windows converge above a band of stained glass.
08THE VAULT
Lower Manhattan sits low beneath an expansive winter-blue sky and a narrow band of harbor water.
09MANHATTAN, HELD
The lower Manhattan skyline stretches across dark blue water beneath a clear winter sky.
10MANHATTAN, HELD
The Statue of Liberty and its stone pedestal rise against an uninterrupted field of deep blue sky.
11LIBERTY / DISTANCE