Eminent Domain

I revisited the NYPL exhibition Eminent Domain yesterday. Because I like photography. The exhibit is just close by so it really won't hurt to see it again.

Last time I didn't own a TLR and today I do own one so I have a newer perspective that I didn't have back a couple months ago.

Some of the "street photographs" were taken by Zoe Leonard. Her forty pictures in exhibition were all in square format and further online searches reveal her aesthetics is really uncropped unphotoshopped pictures (and a bit more but those I don't understand and I don't care, something to do with shooting pussies). And in some of the pictures, I can actually see the photographer's reflection, with hunched back looking down a waist level viewfinder. What I am trying to say is she is a TLR shooter using 6 x 6 film, probably FUJI NHG. For the untrained eyes, myself included, her pictures are really snapshots of certain mundane street scences. But somehow when put together, having enough snapshots of similar themes, they kind of give themselves a voice, a collective voice. I am no artist but I think I somehow can appreciate her works. I remember once I read, a picture of a manhole cover (manhole as in a sewage opening on the street, not ass hole as in anatomy) is not that interesting but if you take pictures of manhole covers and make a collection out of them, then it could be very interesting. I guess Leonard's pictures are one of those manhole pictures, a single one of them is not that interesting, but if you have enough of them, they could be interesting.

More Leonard:-
An interview with Zoe Leonard, from the Journal of Contemporary Arts (I don't know half of what they are talking about)

NYPL Eminent Domain Exhibition

I just went to have a quick look after work. I don't think I spent more than 15 minutes there. I have to go back again.

They look like snapshots but taken as a group, they become very meaningful. I like them especially the series taken in Chinatown by Thomas Holton. They are very documentary looking because they are. The project is not overtly poignant, or being condescending or melodramatic about its subject which is a family with young children living in Chinatown.

The online exhibition is here. I don't know if it's a permalink or not. Admission is free and donations are welcome.