Sofie and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary, this week. Last year, we marked our anniversary by taking a trip to Costa Rica. This year, we decided to stay home and make full use of New York. We ate brunch at home, lunch at MoMA and dinner in the East Village. We window shopped in the diamond district and Tiffany’s (phew), had a glass of bubbly at the W in Union Square, watched one of the best movies I’ve seen in some time, and rounded off the evening in a local bar, which coincidentally happened to be celebrating its fourth birthday. In short, a magical day.

One of the many highlights was an exhibition by British photographer Paul Graham A Shimmer of Possibility at MoMA. The show is quite small (a pleasure in and of itself) and comprises images Graham took while traveling the US. The photographs are of very ordinary people and scenes – a crowd at a gas station, a man mowing the grass, a little girl playing in the street – and they are at once so beautiful and so melancholy that I did not know whether they made me love America more or want to get out of here as fast as possible. It certainly made me want to invest in a proper camera and hit the road.

I see some of Graham’s images are available online but the website does not do them any justice. If you’re in the city the next few months and stuck for something to do, go see this show.

A Shimmer of Possibility. (February 4–May 18, 2009) (MoMA)