Monday, 20 January 2003 | Foam spikes

The Statue of Liberty is where the tourists are, even though it is located on an island that is currently under severe attack by wind and cold. They shuffle forward like cattle onto the ferry, take pictures of each other posing in front of the statue while pointing a finger into the air in a Statue-of-Liberty/Travolta sort of way, obliviously stand on your foot until you tell them not to do that, stand in the way of potentially good pictures, and walk around the island wearing green foam spikes on their heads.

Today I was a tourist; I took ferries that deposited me and the camera army onto Liberty and Ellis Islands, I watched the individual buildings of Manhattan coalesce into one giant chunk of skyline, and I took pictures of a large statue and of rooms that processed 12 million immigrants and turned them loose into the country. I like the thought of buildings as artifacts, and I like trying to picture the progression of time in a single spot—watching the people moving in and out of the building while the sun moves across the floor day after day, as if caught on film and watched at high speed. The museum left me with more questions than answers, though, mainly because the immigrants' stories were truncated in the space where I was standing.