Moveable Feast: Fresh Produce and the NYC Green Cart Program @MCNY

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing 112 black and white and color images from 5 different contemporary photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung in the entry and main divided gallery space on the first floor. An introductory room containing 19 vintage works from 12 different photographers/artists begins the exhibit and provides some historical context. The new work was commissioned by the NYC Green Cart Program, the Aperture Foundation, and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. Newspaper style brochures of the work of each of the 5 main photographers are available for free in the galleries; these are high qaulity and worth taking. (Installation shots at right.)
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The following photographers are included in the main exhibit, with the number of images on view and details in parentheses:
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LaToya Ruby Frazier (6 archival pigment prints, 10 gelatin silver prints, 2009/2010)

Thomas Holton (19 chromogenic prints, 2009/2010)

Shen Wei (8 archival pigment prints, 2010)

Gabriele Stabile (48 chromogenic prints, 1 journal, 2010)

Will Steacy (21 archival pigment prints, 2010)
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The introductory room contains vintage material from the following photographers, with the number of images on view and dates in parentheses:
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Berenice Abbott (2, 1936/1938)

John Albok (1, 1935)

Byron Company (3, 1899/1900)

Nicolino Calyo (3 watercolors)

Ronald Dubin (1, 1947)

Alta Ruth Hahn (2, 1935)

Susan Lorkidkatz (1, 1978)

Edward Martin (2, 1997/1998)

Roy Perry (1, 1940)

Jacob Riis (1, 1895)

Anne Shanks (1, 1955)

Dan Weiner (1, 1951)
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Comments/Context: On the surface, the idea of commissioning five contemporary photographers to take pictures of the sidewalk produce carts in New York city might seem like a project doomed to obscurity, mostly by its inherent narrowness - how many different ways are there, really, to make images of fruit and vegetable vendors? What is astonishing about this show is just how varied the approaches ended up being, and how compelling these stories actually are, especially when seen together as facets of the same whole.
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Of the five bodies of work on view, I found Will Steacy's photographs to be the most haunting, even though there isn't a single produce cart in any of his images. Steacy took the unorthodox approach of making pictures of the environment in which the green carts reside, picking a single location in the Bronx, and then documenting the food options within a roughly 10 block radius of the cart. The result is a contextual map of the neighborhood, with a parade of dismal fast food, from pizza to burgers, deli sandwiches to Mexican, all cheap and easily accessible, and often discarded on the sidewalk. It's a powerful, sometimes ugly, portrait of the problem the green carts are trying to solve.
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Shen Wei also came at the green cart commission from an unexpected angle. His images are elegant still lifes of the food that came from the carts, laid out in pure light on white tablecloths (almost with a nod to Laura Letinsky). The effect is simple and quiet, where watermelons and bananas become sculptural, often still adorned by stickers or packing boxes.
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Gabriele Stabile and Thomas Holton looked beyond the carts to the customers and vendors themselves. Both got to know the people involved, tracking them to their homes, seeing how their lives have been impacted by the buying and selling of fresh produce. Stabile's images are full of family meals, where shopping and cooking are preludes and processes. Holton spent his time with two Bangladeshi vendors, following their struggles both at the cart and beyond.
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LaToya Ruby Frazier's images are more like traditional street photography than the work of any of the others. They capture the juxtaposition and connection of opposites and the mixing of different kinds of people on the city's sidewalks, catching patrons with a handful of fruit or vendors standing idly waiting for the next sale.
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Taken together, these different approaches create a surprisingly robust and multi-layered picture of the impact of these carts. This exhibit is far more nuanced and engaging than you would ever expect, finding subtleties of influence that spread out from the food to a wide range of lives and communities. The photography is consistently well executed, and the overall message is effective: while the battle may be uphill and the existing environment often hostile to their arrival, these produce carts really do work, in all kinds of less than obvious ways.
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Collector's POV: As this is a museum exhibit, there are no prices for these prints. The five main photographers in this show are represented by the following New York galleries:

• LaToya Ruby Frazier: Higher Pictures (here)
• Thomas Holton: Sasha Wolf Gallery (here)
• Shen Wei: Daniel Cooney Fine Art (here)
• Gabriele Stabile: unknown
• Will Steacy: Michael Mazzeo Gallery (here)

In general, their work has not found its way into the secondary markets much (if at all), so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)
• LaToya Ruby Frazier artist site (here)
• Thomas Holton artist site (here)
• Shen Wei artist site (here)
• Gabriele Stabile artist site (here)
• Will Steacy artist site (here)

Moveable Feast: Fresh Produce and the NYC Green Cart Program

Through July 10th
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Museum of the City of New York

1220 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10029

Will Steacy, Down These Mean Streets @Mazzeo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 color images, framed in black with no mat, and hung against grey walls in the entry and main gallery spaces. The pigmented ink prints come in two sizes (or reverse): 16x20 (in editions of 5+2AP) and 24x30 (in editions of 3+2AP). While no dates were given on the gallery checklist, I think we can safely assume that all of these images were made in the past few years. A 16-page tabloid newspaper in both color and black and white is available from the gallery for $5. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The plight of our inner cities isn’t exactly a new topic in the world of contemporary photography. Many photographers have pointed their cameras at our abandoned houses, empty streets, and broken neighborhoods, most with an air of clinical detachment or meticulous anthropological documentation, searching for abstract photographic beauty or subtle irony hidden amid the grit. Will Steacy’s photographs, taken at night while wandering in the transitional zones between airports and urban areas in some of America’s best known cities, have no such comfortable, eyes-averted distance. They are right up in your face, with a level of aggressive confrontation that is unavoidable. This is an artist with a chip on his shoulder, willing to take some risks to jolt us out of our stupor, combining the eye of an investigative reporter with the angry heart of a dramatic story teller.

One wall in the reception area of the gallery is blanketed in a dense, highly personal installation of 3x4 photographs, maps, airline stubs, lottery tickets, news articles, terrorist mug shots, pulp novel covers, flattened beer cans, book pages, plastic booze flasks, matchbooks, taxicab licenses, and other miscellaneous artifacts and ephemera collected along the way during this project, all covered and annotated with scrawled handwriting. It’s the kind of manic, obsessive, intelligent, rage-filled wall that you normally find in the basement lair of a serial killer in the movies. It weaves failings in banking, joblessness, wars, terrorism, foreclosures, broken education, and unaffordable health care together with fear, neglect, and devastation, all wrapped up with an unforgiving rawness that is entirely mesmerizing and real. The wrench Steacy used for protection during his night time shoots is collaged next to his old labor union card; a broken newspaper box lies in front, with strewn trash on the floor nearby. It is a harrowing, multi-dimensional portrait of an artist thoroughly annoyed by the destruction of the American Dream and exasperated at our complicit avoidance of seeing what is happening or doing anything about it.

Nearly all of the larger photographs in the main gallery are awash in the malignant glare of acidic streetlights. They depict bullet holes, cigarette butts, boarded up housing projects, homeless people, gutter trash, and vacant lots, but they do so without voyeuristic sentimentality or cheap sensationalism. Even though Steacy is an outsider to these particular communities, his viewpoint comes from within, more in a social documentary style steeped in everyday realism. He has chosen emblematic scenes that have a formal clarity, with an added edge of anxiety and danger. A coffee cup lies inside a broken newspaper vending machine, a bus bench is reduced to two sawed off stubs, a purse lies abandoned on the sidewalk, and a fence encircles a dark brick housing facility, a barrier for both those wanting to get in and those wanting to get out. The sense of being out-in-the-open and alone is palpable.

In some ways, this isn’t the easiest work to like. It holds up a mirror to a world we have created for ourselves that isn’t particularly pretty. What I find most memorable is that there is a sense of fighting spirit in these pictures; the artist has dug deeply and worked hard to tell these sometimes bleak and unforgiving stories. As result, they have power and intensity that is absent in other similar drive-by projects of ruined cities. Steacy has immersed himself in this neglected and forgotten part of our world, made it his own, and is clearly taking it personally.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced in rising editions. The 16x20 works begin at $1200 and rise to $2200; the 24x30 works begin at $2000 and rise to $3500. Steacy's work is not yet available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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As an aside, I think these images will make a terrific book, especially if the photographer adds in some of the back stories and ideas found in the chaotic installation.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) and blog (here)
• Review: New Yorker (here)
• Interviews: Conscientious (here), BOMBlog (here)
• Feature: Conscientious (here)

Will Steacy, Down These Mean Streets
Through July 30th

Michael Mazzeo Gallery
526 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Will Steacy in Harper's

I was recently flipping through the new August issue of Harper's (here) and came across a short photo essay/portfolio (9 images) drawn from Will Steacy's Down These Mean Streets project. It seems that all of our media outlets are now searching for contemporary work that somehow captures the current angst of the nation; scenes of struggle against failure, and despair, and hopelessness, modern day equivalents of the dust bowl shots of the FSA photographers (Evans, Lange, Rothstein et al.). They want to point our attention to the vacant lots and For Rent signs, the abandoned buildings and empty neighborhoods, as if they weren't obviously visible in every town in America.

What I like about Will Steacy's approach to this now overexposed subject is that rather than give us the standard dreary deadpan view of these marginal grey neighborhoods, he has explored this terrain at night, when the street lights add a toxic glare to the surroundings and the threat of undefined danger is now out in the open rather than hiding in the shadows. (Burned Car, Los Angeles, 2009, via Conscientious, at right.) There is a subtle electric buzz in these pictures, capturing that tingling feeling when your senses are on high alert; a mixture of uneasy anxiety, excitement, and a hint of fear, knowing that you are a bit exposed out here in the night. The addition of the darkness turns these streets from merely exhausted and depressing into something altogether more desperate.

And yet these kinds of shadowlands and in between zones are everywhere in this country; dodgy areas of disrepair and decay that form the (growing) border areas between the "good" neighborhoods from coast to coast. So in some ways, the subject matter of these pictures is altogether unsurprising. And while we've seen them before, Steacy has found a way to infuse the rubble piles and security doors with the elusive spirit of the moment: nervous, a bit threatened, and undeniably on edge.

Collector's POV: Will Steacy is represented in New York by Michael Mazzeo Gallery (here). The images from this series come in two sizes, 16x20 and 24x30, priced at $1200 and $2000 respectively. My particular favorite of the images in the Harper's portfolio is Bench, Queens, 2008, an image of a wooden bus bench, sawed apart, leaving only the solitary metal supports.

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) and blog (here)
• Down These Mean Streets @NYU Gulf & Western Gallery, 2009 (here)
• Interviews: Conscientious (here), BOMBlog (here)