William OKeefeMadison Ave between E 93rd St and E 94th StHeart Four · Location 480 · Drawn July 2004Download photograph 1Download photograph 2Download photograph 3Download photograph 4Download photograph 5Download photograph 6Download photograph 7Download photograph 8Download photograph 9Download photograph 10Download photograph 11Download photograph 12Download photograph 13Download photograph 14Download photograph 15Show all 15 photographsVideo podcast0:00North of East 93rd Street on Madison Avenue is a collection of slightly fancy0:08shops on both sides of the street. On the east side of the street the stores has0:13changed a couple times over the last year except for Rene Accessories and0:18Home Collections. Just to the left of the store, number 1325, is a four-foot stretch0:24stretch of wide brown bricks framed on either side by a green wooden border on the right0:31and the display case to a new store, Linda Horn, on the left.0:37Directly behind you is a tree bordered by an army of little red flowers and white plants.0:45This is Captain William OKeefe.0:48He was drawn in July of 2004.0:52His drawing is counting two people.0:57I think that a lot of the strength of this project comes from what you were talking about.1:02It's not a political statement in many ways.1:05I mean, there's some aspects of it that could be sort of interpreted that way or discussed that way,1:10but it really was or is, like you said, about acknowledging the loss of life1:15and sort of representing that loss of life.1:17And I think what's interesting about that is that to me that makes sense.1:21Like this project as a project that came out of the first week after that event happened1:27makes sense to me.1:29Were you to start that project today, it'd be an incredibly different project.1:34Like it would not be the same project at all.1:36You know?1:36We just never would.1:40In a way it's a wonderfully kind of like naive and simple premise, you know?1:47And the conversation about it has become so much not about that just initial loss of life1:54that you couldn't ignore all that stuff.1:57The way that when it just first happened and it was so raw and so immediate2:02that you kind of could make that statement at that point.2:05One of the very, very first flash of a premise for the project2:11was to figure out where everybody who passed away had lived2:17to their zip codes or hometowns and draw them there. Wow. So you know this2:22obviously beyond the scope of anything we could possibly execute but you know2:29but it spoke to the spoke to the pure the core of the idea which is showing2:36the loss of life in outline by geography and that geography has taken the shape2:43of the hearts now and it's turned more into celebrating Manhattan as a location.2:51Never loud or aggressive, Captain O'Keefe was nevertheless assertive. He had a quiet2:57way that served him well as a firefighter and later as an officer. He was never boastful,3:03he was a gentleman. The only thing that Captain O'Keefe, 48 and in the best shape of his life,3:09liked more than running...← Location 479Heart Four · Location 480Location 481 →
