“Tolkien 01A”—What you see is the skyline of New York City, from which the head of a character from the Middle-earth saga of Tolkien emerges. Together with the 5-letter fragment ‘NEWY’, this head forms the city name. The grayish overall picture conveys an ambivalent mood – not only because of the orc head. In literature, orcs symbolize evil, cruelty, violence and death. The dark side of this cosmopolitan city is reflected in the tonal combination of text and orc (head). For decades – especially from the 1970s to the 1990s – the city resembled a Moloch, characterized by murder, crack and the mafia. Even though the city is now one of the safest major cities in the USA, New Yorkers feel increasingly unsafe—the orc is still on the loose in the city.

The background is a slightly modified, freely available photograph, and the work is part of a series that draws on themes and figures from literature. Here, too, a wide variety of themes are explored on three levels.