Vintage Chic

When a peacock escaped from the Central Park Zoo on Tuesday, the photographer Landon Nordeman happened to be in the neighborhood. Choosing not to defy any peacock stereotypes, the bird had settled into a posh building on the Upper East Side, 838 Fifth Avenue, in a fifth-floor ledge with a Park view. He may have been free from captivity, but was no less the object of gawking. While passers-by spent the day photographing the bird on the lam, Landon spent the day—from 11 A.M. until 10:30 P.M.—photographing them. (The bird outlasted them all, staying until 6:45 the next morning.)

One of the rubberneckers turned out to be Rupert Murdoch, who lives in the co-op next door, at 834. (See slide 6.) His recent tribulations seem not to have dimmed his childlike sense of wonder. (He may even have been strutting; it was the same day that his pie-throwing assailant was sentenced to six weeks in prison.)

“There’s something about the variety of people within this series that I can’t let go of,” Landon wrote in an e-mail. “Old people, kids, Murdoch, the guy collecting cans, a cop, the guy in the suit and hat, the old ladies, the families, the tourists,” he said, “all democratically lumped together by a fugitive peacock!”

Click through for a selection of Landon’s photographs.