Tag: photos

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Camilo José Vergara’s Tracking Time (Harlem)

The photos attached are photos taken by Camilo José Vergara for his project Tracking Time. Vergara has been photographing the poorest and most segregated neighborhoods in urban America for more than 40 years. The photos that I have attached onto this post are some, but not all, photographs of two locations in Harlem, the southwest corner of West 125th Street at Malcolm X Boulevard and 65 East 125th Street.

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Outside Resource: the art of Gordon Matta-Clark and New York in the 1970s

In the 1970s the artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) entered condemned buildings in the Bronx and, using a chainsaw, cut out parts of the architectural support. Matta-Clark considered the transitory, fugitive acts of (illegally) entering and cutting as the work of art so he documented his process with photographs that were then exhibited in galleries:

Gordon Matta-Clark, Threshole, 1972-73. Image Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/07/towards-anarchitecture-gordon-matta-clark-and-le-corbusier
Gordon Matta Clark, Bronx Floors (1972-73). MOMA. Image source: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81396

His work doesn’t aim to create “beautiful” art but explore the politics of place and space. In her book about Matta-Clark, Object to be Destroyed , Pamela M. Lee describes the relationship between artist, artistic practice, and space:

Matta-Clark reflected critically on the temporality of the build environment, a materialist recoding of an “architecture of time.” For the presence of his work within both the urban and suburban sphere emanded that it be encountered as a socialized thing; and its imminent demolition ensured that it not be elevated to the rank of transcendent art objects.

Source: Lee, Object to be Destroyed, 11.

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