Baby, it's icy outside!

This winter morning, my neighborhood looked like an outdoor skating rink. I slid with every step even though I was wearing my Sorels. It was miserable. Likewise, I look at the ice cascading out of the windows in this Vergara photo, and I feel the cold. Taken in the Henry Horner Homes in Chicago in 1995, this photo speaks to the dead cold of winter as it turns to spring. The ground around the building is mostly ice-free. The ice coming out of this abandoned building's windows is the coldest of the cold. There's movement, but not the kind you can see, at least not before the ice crashes to the ground in its final resignation. I hope my Bronx neighborhood sees this moment soon.

It's been a couple of posts since I've mentioned Vergara, but whenever I research urban exploration photography that I admire, it often begins with me Googling his name. This is how I found the above photograph, from a short Slate blog post from January 15, 2010: "American Ruins: Nature is taking back these buildings." Truth is that a small Vergara slideshow of this sort is nice - in spite of the now often-seen images of the Packard Plant and former Michigan Central Railroad Station -- but I really hope that somebody is shooting for an extensive book of nature taking back buildings. I could look at those photos all day. Would that still be ruin porn or would it be something else? Hmmm...

My Google search also turned up another 2010 Vergara media reference, this one from December 27th in a Times blog post titled "What was your worst travel experience of the year?" Urban explorers often have fantastic stories about unexpected things that happen while they're out in the field, so to speak. But the ruins are an urban explorer's destination. Vergara's awful travel experience is quite pedestrian. Here's an excerpt:

Realizing we were really stuck the driver let us off in a place I could not identify because of the snow, the wind and the cold.
As I got off my feet sank almost up to my knees and the wind blew snow on my face. I could not read the street signs.
I learnt how difficult it is to carry a suitcase and a heavy bag full of Christmas presents when there is a foot of fresh snow on the ground.
Suitcases don't roll on snow.
Hands freeze when uncovered.
On my hair snow turned to ice.
And I didn't know where I was going.

Stay warm, everybody, unless you want to be cold!

Photo caption: Henry Horner Homes, 2051 W. Lake St., Chicago, 1995. Photo by Camilo Jose Vergara.

Vergara exhibition at the New-York Historical Society

Urban Landscaped readers know that I'm a fan of Camilo José Vergara's photographs and books. Vergara has a distinct viewpoint blending UE photography, sociology, and street photography, and he's author of two of my favorite books American Ruins and Unexpected Chicagoland. But his work hasn't been shown on museum walls for a good couple of years in NYC; I missed that party in the late 1990s and early millennium.

Harlem 1970-2009: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara was up at the New-York Historical Society through last Saturday, July 11th. I saw the show on its last day, or I would've posted earlier.

I had incorrectly assumed that Harlem, 1970-2009 would primarily consist of Vergara's "storefront" series, ie: his shots of the same storefront over a period of time (ie: 2038 5th Avenue 1992, 1996, 1999, 2005). I really like this series and saw him talk about it once over a private lunch gathering at The New York Public Library (and I received a place mat of the above series as a souvenir!). But a lot of this work is available on Vergara's Invincible Cities website, and I wasn't chomping at the bit to see it on the wall.

Instead, Harlem, 1970-2009 demonstrated Vergara's mix of photography with a wide variety of styles and subject matter. (Looking at the dates of the work, it also seems that Vergara might've shot quite a bit specifically for the show.) Storefronts, as the section was called, was a small part of the exhibition and consisted of only six groupings (one of which is reproduced on my place mat). Other sections were titled Transformations, Heart of Harlem, Religion, Landmarks and Benchmarks, Graphics, and Obama. If anything, Vergara tried to cover too much territory, covering forty years of Harlem in the one hundred photos on display.

Street photography started the exhibition in a rather calm, understated way. Thankfully, it was assumed that "Harlem" was a known entity; no paragraphs based on the historical migration of people to its area. Storefronts warmed the viewer up to representation through inanimate objects and landscape. Transformations, my favorite section, followed. Transformations consisted of diptychs and triptychs, mainly slightly aerial, of specific intersections , ie: Frederick Douglass Boulevard between West 134th and West 135th Street (1993 and 2008) and Frederick Douglass and West 143rd Street (1988, 2001, and 2007). Parking lots and independent fish markets give way to office buildings with ground level Duane Reade and Chase Bank locations. It's a zoomed-out version of Storefronts and Vergara's answer to Mark Klett's Rephotographic Survey Project from the late 1970s. (I'm not even close to tiring of rephotography.)

The only weak link in this section was the confusing diptych of Untitled (Harlem Welcomes President Clinton), 2001 and Untitled (Marathon), 2008. While Vergara often doesn't rephotograph in a precise manner (he doesn't take out the GPS like Klett does), these two locales seemed disparate and needed additional information for the viewer. Does this duo convey a divestment of Harlem because the 2008 photo has a boarded-up building in the foreground? I don't know. But I bet that Vergara, who holds an M.A. in Sociology from Columbia, had ideas about this.

Graphics featured murals (not graffiti, which has been featured in many shows recently) and was interesting. But fascinating was Vergara's narrative, in words, accompanying the images. In just a few sentences, Vergara dissected Harlem's mural trends from the last 40 years: 1970s murals were "angrily condemning racism and slavery"; "depictions of deceased drug dealers and their victims were popular" in the 1980s and 1990s. "Today the facades of buildings in Harlem advertise such products as gin, beer, Old Navy clothing, BMW sport cars, sneakers, black TV shows or schools, and rappers." Vergara's conversation with a building superintendent is summarized on a label accompanying a photo of a MLK mural located behind garbage cans (Coincidentally,the two men talked on MLK Day). A recent ad for 50 Cent's Formula 50 water is accompanied by labels claiming that 50 Cent and P Diddy are Harlem's current figureheads.

The Religion section of the exhibition featured photos taken from 2007 through 2009; there were photographs of churches and people (in their Sunday finest). Vergara has done the church beat before (see How the Other Half Worships). "Although there are over 300 congregations in Harlem today, many of the smaller ones have closed or moved, and Harlem is no longer an incubator of struggling churches."

The photographs in Landmarks and Benchmarks were not my favorite of Vergara's work, but there were a lot of interesting Harlem factoids. Do you know what "Koch" windows are? Isn't the Mount Morris Fire Watchtower an interesting structure? Why has the building that housed the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino stayed shuttered since 1979? The photographic highlight was the cross formation of "security" photos, but stylistically, they were very different than the Vergara photos we know, and it was a bit of a turn-off.

The Obama and Sculpture sections were interesting, but the exhibition would not have lacked in their absence. The Heart of Harlem photographs were displayed in the center of the space and were nice street photography shots of electic Harlem residents.

Harlem, 1970-2009: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara displayed a broader style of Vergara's photography; in and of itself, this made the show thought-provoking. Aesthetically, it seemed a bit like a Vergara retrospective (without American Ruins, that is) with the cohesive subject matter of Harlem creating the bonds between different types of photographic works.

While I was in the exhibition space, a group of approximately a dozen sightseers entered the space; most were in their 20's, but a few were older. After about ten minutes of looking at photographs on one side of the room, the tour guide/leader of the group asked the then-seated-and-ignoring-the-show group "What do you want to do?" Several voices responded quickly: "Shopping!" The tour guide was disappointed. "Really?" he asked. After several minutes of conversation about future plans, one 20-something male said, "(Let's) Go to 125th Street." The group left shortly thereafter. Most likely, the group shopped and got to see billboards of 50 Cent and P Diddy. But they probably didn't see Vergara's Harlem, and that's kind of sad.

Image is Vergara's 65 East 125th Street (2007).

abandoned gas stations, Detroit's Tiger Stadium, and more

I plan on posting more to this blog, really, I do. I've thought of dozens and dozens of posts and not had the time. This is going to change. Here are a few small tidbits in the meantime:

Detroit's Tiger Stadium
The Packard Plant might be the biggest abandoned site in Detroit, but Tiger Stadium is/was the most public, as it's located on a main road and...a stadium. It doesn't cease to amaze me that every major city needs new stadiums built, at the expense of the taxpayers, every few years. Here in NYC, both the Yankees and the Mets are getting new stadiums. Anyways...after approximately eight years of non-use, the powers that be are currently in the process of deconstructing Tiger Stadium.

There was/is an unsuccessful conservation effort of the stadium.
Last September, several photographers were allowed to enter the stadium and document its disrepair.
Faded Detroit has blogged numerous times about Tiger Stadium.


Photo by Derek Farr (DetroitDerek), from Flickr. (He has great photos of the demolition-in-progress as well.)

Call for Volunteers for Open House New York
Open House New York's annual weekend is scheduled this year for Saturday and Sunday, October 4 & 5. I've enjoyed visiting many of the architectural sites open during the event, and I've volunteered a couple of times over the years. Volunteering for a four-hour shift at one of the sites is a pretty stress-free way to contribute to this amazing New York event, and volunteers also get a free tee-shirt and a button that allows them to cut lines (at some locations) during their off-time.

Open House New York's website has more information.
Last year, I blogged about my experience as a volunteer and also about my visits to other sites.

Camilo Jose Vergara's Out of Gas
As the price of gas continues to increase, spending time at the pump grows increasingly painful and more unpopular. Somewhat outside of this context (but can it really be context-free?), The New York Times recently published a brief slideshow of abandoned gas station photos taken by Camilo Jose Vergara. Oddly enough, it was filed in the "Opinion" section.

Here's my favorite photo from the slideshow:


Sykes & Son Tire Repair, Grand River Avenue at Mendota Street, Detroit, 2002. Photo by Camilo Jose Vergara.

a link for Martin Luther King Day

For today's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, NPR did a piece about Camilo Jose Vergara's documentation of King murals in urban America. The interview and the slide show is available here. I've copied and pasted the text that Vergara wrote about this project, which is also available at the NPR website.

Photographing a Ubiquitous Subject

by Camilo Jose Vergara

NPR.org, January 19, 2008 · In the following essay for NPR.org, Camilo Jose Vergara writes about the images of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that he has photographed and how they are beginning to disappear in some places.

In America's poorest neighborhoods, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps the most popular subject of public art, along with the streets, hospitals, schools and housing projects bearing his name. Collectively these have become one of the defining elements of the American ghetto. I believe that they help us understand how people living in poor, segregated urban communities — those about whom Dr. King was most concerned — perceive him and his legacy. They show how inner-city residents use his portrait to feel proud, to sell merchandise, and to develop a sense of security, identity and belonging.

Since 1977, I have been documenting images of Dr. King that regularly appear along the commercial streets and alleys of such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Camden, N.J., and Baltimore. Many of the murals portraying this civil rights leader are painted on the outside walls of liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast food restaurants, mom and pop stores, and public housing projects. The majority are the work of sign painters and amateur artists. All of the statues and many of the murals I photographed are located on streets named after him.

Over time I became interested in learning why these images are so pervasive. I feel that they reflect a significant cultural phenomenon: the rise of Dr. King as a central moral figure in poor neighborhoods, and his elevation to secular sainthood as the savior of dispossessed African Americans. His varied representations, often based on photographs taken from the national media, express poor people's perceptions.

After the South Los Angeles riots of 1992, many Latino shopkeepers had Dr. King's portrait painted on the facades of their stores in the hope of staving off the African-American rioters from robbing or vandalizing their businesses.

Wherever they are located, his portraits are usually respected, thus escaping damage and defacement. Sometimes, however, practical considerations result in electric cords emerging from his face, or a closed-circuit TV camera being attached to his ear, or security gates installed over his portrait.

But few of the sign painters hired for portraits of Dr. King have been particularly adept at getting good likenesses, with the result that he often comes out looking Mexican or even Mexican Indian. And now that Latinos in South Los Angeles have become the majority, new images of Dr. King rarely appear while the old portraits of him have been replaced by religious images and specifically Latino subjects.

The phrase "I have a dream" is often written above or below portraits of King. The dream is about justice, equality, three meals a day, housing, education, jobs and peace in the neighborhood. The many images of him in the inner city are powerful reminders to residents to keep pursuing those goals.

Camilo Jose Vergara has been documenting urban America for more than three decades. His work is included in the Berman Collection at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and in 2002 he won a Macarthur Genius Grant for his photography. He is the author of several books, including How the Other Half Worships.


Mott Haven section of the South Bronx, 1977. Photo by Camilo Jose Vergara.

'American Ruins' x 3

I was looking through the latest issue of photo-eye, and I came across an ad for Merrell Publishers. Featured was a photography book by Arthur Drooker titled American Ruins.

As you may remember, photographer Camilo Jose Vergara is one of my favorite photogs, and I recently asked him to autograph my copy of his book American Ruins (first published in 1999).

I also work with Ars Subterranea, and we've screened the work-in-progress film of a couple of our members, Bryan Papciak and Jeff Sias. The film is titled American Ruins, and its website can be found at www.americanruins.com.

One of my friends and collaborators pointed out to me today the first line of the "Book Description" of Drooker's book on Amazon.com: "American Ruins" is the first photography book to document historic ruins throughout the United States." ?!?!?!

It seems like a few people didn't do their research; photographers have been shooting historic ruins in America for many years now. Clarence John Laughlin and his book Haunter of Ruins come immediately to mind, just because now I'm thinking about my favorite photographers. Laughlin is most commonly referred to as a surrealist, but Haunter of Ruins features abandoned and deserted New Orleans buildings, which are pretty darn American. He was most active in the 1940s-60s. I'm sure somebody precedes him as well....

"American Ruins", the name and phrase, is genius and catchy. I understand this. It is not an excuse for it to be the only catchphrase that captures the movement of photographing significant abandoned American buildings.

Mr. Vergara's and Mr. Drooker's works are quite different. Simplistically stated, Vergara's is content driven. His photography is similar to Richard Avedon's (another one of my favorite photogs), in that it is direct and relies on its subject to provide the visual thrills. Drooker's work is romantic, mostly engineered by its use of infrared photography but also by the photos' compositions. I strongly prefer Vergara's style.

I also find it offputting that the main image used on several of American Ruins' (the film) webpages is so similar to Drooker's book cover.

Boo to Merrell, and yes, boo to Drooker as well.


A seldom-viewed Clarence John Laughlin image, interesting particularly in its subject location -
The Head in the Wall [building being demolished, near 2nd and K Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.]
[Poems of Desolation]
1945
Source: Luminous-lint.com


While I was studying photography as a post-grad student in the early 90's, I traveled to New Orleans a couple of times and visited a photo gallery that had a few Laughlin prints and sold his books. This alone made my visits to New Orleans worthwhile; that's how strongly Laughlin's work affected me.

meeting Camilo Jose Vergara

Camilo Jose Vergara is a Fellow this year at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and I had the opportunity to meet him a couple of weeks ago at a reception. Vergara's work is truly inspired and inspirational, and I love that he combines sociology (one of my undergraduate degrees is in sociology), photography, and urban exploration. There were lots of things I wanted to say to Mr. Vergara, but he seemed a little bit shy. I did attend with my copy of American Ruins, and I asked him to sign it. When I handed him my copy of his book, he retreated to his office and started flipping through the pages to ascertain which printing of the book I owned. I was elated when he noted that my book was well-used -- oh, the empty lots it's laid in -- and he recommended a few places for my upcoming trip to Detroit. He signed my book "for Gayle a fellow enthusiast of ruins."

Vergara is speaking about his Harlem project (see Invincible Cities link) on Wednesday, October 10 at the Museum of the City of New York. The program is titled Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto. I'll report back afterwards.