If I was to say what I hope to achieve with my street photography, it would be to keep documenting the ever-changing streets of New York City in all its rat-infested, garbage-piled glory. Perhaps I’m fascinated by all the grime and grit this city has to offer because I grew up in the countryside in the United Kingdom with only the sound of cattle moving in the night. On my path to New York, I’ve done just about everything, working as a street-cleaner, garbage-hauler, milkman, paper delivery boy, Champagne waiter, nightclub barman, DJ, and real-estate broker. I was willing to learn everything and anything, so when I was offered a job as a photographer with a celebrity news agency in New York, I jumped at the opportunity.
One page detailed a food store that Toll had buried on the Taimyr Peninsula in September 1900, early in his voyage. First, he described its location: a spot five meters above sea level, marked with a wooden cross. Then he described the hole itself, dug deep through thawed clay, peat, and ice. And finally, the contents: “a box with 48 cans of cabbage soup, a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of rye rusks [dry biscuits], a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of oatmeal, a soldered box containing about four pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of chocolate, seven plates and one brick of tea.”
After the diary’s Russian publication, explorers rushed north to find Toll’s depot. But his description of the store’s geographic location proved impossibly vague. What’s more, every expedition searched during the spring, when the snow was still heavy. Inevitably, they all came home empty-handed. It seemed as if the Toll food cache might remain as elusive as Sannikov Land itself, were it not for a geopolitical tangle in 1973.
The house temperature at 4am. Attempts to keep quiet after stepping hard on the blunt, plastic head of an LOL Surprise Doll buried deep in her purple shag carpet. The too-thin pillows and too-warm blankets on her princess bed, where her bad dreams force you to join her at this hour. (Taggers, she’ll later tell you, on the drive to school; she was dreaming of taggers spray-painting her room, because you’d described to her what graffiti was after she’d found it on the park bench beside her favorite climbing tree and now she can’t stop seeing it everywhere: street signs, store fronts, bus walls, bathroom stalls, permanently hardened into concrete sidewalks.)
Socks with scratchy plastic tags that irritate small heel bones tucked in rainbow-light-up-mermaid rain boots. Attempts to wiggle and bend her reluctant spaghetti arms through unicorn-glitter-sparkle rain jacket sleeve holes. Missing the days you could choose her outfits, strap her to your front, and be out the door, just like that.
For all the fronds growing out of arms and flames coming out of characters’ eyes, this story convinced me it was about real people and an important place. By the end, it felt less like Arnott was imbuing his local landscape with magic, and more that the landscape itself was lending his book some of its strange and special power. That’s a decent trick.
Marriage sets off egg tagliatelle and shame,
insists it is the solution
and not the problem