The Museum of the City of New York set next to the upper end of Central Park runs a variety of exhibitions all surrounding the history and culture of the city that most of us call home. I saw the exhibitions of Jacob Riis’s photographs as well as the affordable housing exhibit. The former I enjoyed exponentially more. The latter felt like propaganda. Jacob Riis became iconic as an American figure for exposing the unjust and cruel underbelly of America’s premier metropolis. With some living in splendor, others lived in squalor. People are shown sleeping on the floor of stations and public houses, far exceeding the sanctioned capacity of a given area. Riis in his photographs, the ones taken by him, have a tendency to penetrate the barrier between viewer and subject, bridging the gap of historical displacement and unfamiliarity.
Jacob Riis and his documentarian style of photography met its antithesis at the affordable housing exhibit, where everything seem clean and polished. The public disagreement to housing projects was represented only at the very back of the exhibit, along with photographs of the actual buildings in their time of use. This very small section alone felt genuine as a representation of the reality of public housing. The rest seemed to be nothing more and nothing less than propaganda.
Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the neighborhoods that have become synonymous with hipsters. These neighborhoods have been established as the capital of Hipsterdom, yet many non-hipsters live in these neighborhoods. When hipsters have the money to pump into a neighborhood, and the people owning buildings are willing to raise the rents to get as much money as possible, you have a neighborhood set on a path of change without any formal discussion between the newcomers and the current residents. This fosters a ground for animosity similar to the “pressure from below.” Yet the “pressure from above” is what sets the change in motion. It comes from those who have the money, and those who are making the money. In a city where the luxury condos reach higher into the sky than the Freedom Tower, one must consider that there will always be overwhelming “pressure from above.” Until the “pressure from below” becomes a unified entity with great political sway, neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint will be ruled from above.
The community boards are supposed to be a channel for “pressure from below” to rise toward the “above.” But do they really function that way? Or do they try to function that way, but confront constant barriers, beginning with their advisory role?
Back to the museum exhibits: some people would say, and probably did say, in 1905, that Riis’s photos are “propaganda.” Was the affordable housing exhibit propaganda because almost all the materials from earlier times spoke favorably about public housing, and claimed that public housing would cure social ills? Do you think that people honestly had those hopes for public housing? Then perhaps one problem with public housing is that it was not built to be really solid, the way that community boards were not set up to be really heard?
What do you think?
Professor Zukin