Paul Auster’s “Smoke,” Reimagined, Or, Eyeing The Flash

Some people are not so much upset about the due process issues of red light cameras as they are annoyed by the flash itself:

Since September, the number of such cameras in the city has doubled, to 100, and one of the more controversial new arrivals is attached to a pole on Ninth Avenue near 57th Street. The picture is taken by equipment in a glossy beige box the size of a hotel minibar. Above the box sits the flash, a 300-watt strobe light.

Fixed 20-odd feet above the street, the flash points not down but straight out to the southeast, making it resemble a sort of semaphore, beaming messages into the ether.

Across the street and one block south, the flashes invade the antiques-filled eighth-floor living room of the Cahnmann family. They live in the Parc Vendome, an imposing complex of condominiums that fills the square block bounded by Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 56th and 57th Streets.

“When the lights are out, it’s like someone outside our house is taking a photograph,” said Emily Cahnmann, an event planner who works from home. “But even in the daytime, people go, ‘What’s that?’ And I say, ‘Oh, that’s the paparazzi, taking photos of us.'”

The traffic camera was installed only in December. But Ms. Cahnmann has already developed a weary familiarity with its ways, as have other residents of north-facing apartments in the Parc Vendome. “On Saturday nights, between midnight and 3 in the morning, it goes off much more,” Ms. Cahnmann said. “I guess people think, ‘It doesn’t see me here.'”