TUFANKJIAN: Like what seemed like every person in New York, I spent the morning of February 12 watching and photographing the opening of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's the Gates in Central Park. While I, of course, was impressed by the overall scale of the project, the Gates seemed the most beautiful to me, not when lining a bike path, but when glimpsed through the trees or stumbled upon somewhere unexpected. As I soon realized that these moments of stillness would be difficult to find during the bustle of that first afternoon, I left the park and returned at sunset with company and a thermos of ginger tea. While climbing through a particularly muddy section of Central Park's lake I saw this moment, which had both the stillness I was looking for, and the general "New York-ness" that was a key aspect of the project.

"The Gates" project by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude opened in Central Park on Saturday, February 12, 2005. The long awaited work consisted of over 7,500 gates that snaked through 23 miles of the parks walkways. In all, the installation was on view for 16 days, till February 27, 2005.