Words and photographs by Keith Goldstein

(The more I looked at these pictures the more the cones took on life and meaning. They serve as a caution and a warning, and they appear everywhere that humans walk and eat and live and die: Marking our crumbling roads and buildings, standing guard at our funerals or outside of basement doors that hang open like the gaping gates of the underworld. They began to seem like Macbeth’s weird sisters, grasping each other in a sort of dance with their skinny caution-tape arms. But we don’t notice them or we lock them up or mistreat them. And they topple over, exhausted by the effort of saving us from ourselves. – Magpies Ed.)

I first began noticing cones several years ago. I would occasionally photograph them if they appeared in an unusual place or just happened to be in the scene unexpectedly. With the arrival of COVID, and being a person who likes to take long walks while photographing, their appearance became more frequent in my imagery. On my long walks during the height of COVID, the streets were virtually deserted. I began to observe that cones were everywhere. The cones began to be symbolic surrogates for human presence … or absence. Their serendipitous placement and interaction in their surroundings was somewhat surreal. Now that the streets are once again filled with life, I sometimes find myself photographing cones more than people on the street. 

Keith Goldstein is a photographer living and working in New York City. More of his work can be seen here.