I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I don’t usually do any deep analysis when selecting places to photograph. If something seems interesting, that’s good enough for me. That’s the case with today’s image.

In the past, it took considerable effort to track down a location that I photographed in the city. That was the situation during my Paris series, where I also walked around the city and snapped pictures. I often had to find landmarks and use Google and Street View to reconstruct the actual place where I made the photo. No longer. AI to the rescue. For this picture, I fed it into ChatGPT and merely asked, “Where is this?” “It looks like Cortlandt Alley,” responded ChatGPT in seconds. I Googled the location to confirm.

I also asked ChatGPT if this was an art installation. Certainly, no one in the city would be drying their clothes like this anymore, right? There was no conclusive answer, although Cortlandt Alley is often used as a movie set. In fact, clotheslines have been installed here to transform the alley into old New York for film productions. Whether that explains what I photographed, I still don’t know.

I also learned that Cortlandt Alley is on the Tribeca/Chinatown edge, in close proximity to SoHo and Little Italy. So without realizing it, our walk had taken us through yet another distinctive part of Lower Manhattan.

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