Clock Tower, Brooklyn, XLIV: June 22-23, 2009

Time kept ticking when photographer Vera Lutter created this image from inside a clock tower in Brooklyn, New York. Lutter made the photograph by using an enormous camera obsura—a darkened room with a small hole on one side that causes exterior light to project a negative image (inverted and reversed) onto an interior wall. Making such a large image required a many-hour exposure, which produced magical results. The photograph makes visible the passing of intangible things, like space, light, and above all time. For example, the hands of the clock are constantly turning, and so they all but disappear. The people, cars, and trains you’d expect to see in New York move too fast to register, leaving mere ghosts in the eerily empty scene.