New and Old

Two centuries of New York stand side by side here: Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street, finished in 2011, its stainless-steel skin rippling like wind-blown fabric, beside an ornate older masonry tower with a carved stone crown. The new building's folds were shaped by computer; the old one's by hand.

Photographed May 2013. The light catches the ripples of the Gehry tower and the cornices of its neighbor at once. In black and white the contrast sharpens — the soft metal waves against the hard cut stone, the city's newest idea leaning over one of its older ones.