Over the years, as I’ve photographed the city, I’ve amassed a collection of loose typologies—those omnipresent features like storefront churches, split houses, and dead ends that create a throughline across the different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York.
One of the first subjects I began to document somewhat systematically was handball walls. These large concrete monoliths, pockmarked, peeling, and painted-over slabs, preside over playgrounds like oversized Rorschach tests. A standard wall is 16’ by 20’, mirroring the proportions of the 8x10 camera I was working with. They are everywhere.