endless summer press

by Joshua Blank 

“The Meadowlands is a place to pass through and forget on the way to someplace else.” This excerpt is part of an introduction to Joshua Lutz’s Meadowlands series now on view at Clamp Art. This sentence illustrates my personal impression of the area, or at least what images I can visualize when trying to define it in my mind. I recall traveling there only twice in my life, when I was forced by my uncle to go to a Banjovi concert at Giant Stadium and the other time was a class trip to Medieval Times; (a eat and watch arena style medieval performance), when I was in the forth grade. I remember wide-open fields split by highway intersections, service roads, and rail limes. As depicted in Lutz’s images some people seem to just end up there, like the African American family displaced by hurricane Katina. The Meadowlands is an insignificant place located in an area of transit between New York City and Continental America. It embodies a grey area of a contemporary American culture that is successfully illustrated in Lutz’s images. The pictures in this series describe the Meadowlands as if written in an essay of social satire semantically through the use of the deadpan photography esthetic. The juxxposintining of landscapes and environmental portraiture present a vivid representation of this areas complexity.

The Meadowlands series seems disjointed in subject matter, covering topics of promiscuity, pregnancy, new suburbia, apparent disaster, religion, travel, big wheeled trucks, motels, portraiture. Landscape, and digital manipulation to name a few of its relevant topics. However this series begins to account for the social and developmental makeup of the area that is as mismatched as is the combination of subjects in Lutz’s series. Today society’s cannot be defined by ethnography and the divisions of class, but by the current local history’s emerging and dissipating with time and change in an environment. The Meadowlands series documents moments of architectural and social allegory within the duration of the project. However some of the portraits are staged and the artist has changed the text in one visually to state a satiric comment. Moreover the images presented without captions and or specific information about the context of each image leave the viewer to interpret through personal semantic reference.

Lutz’s audience wont know that an image has been manipulated and they wont know the stories of the people who find themselves in these situations of circumstance. They will only be provided with visual information’s on the immediate context of each photograph. Viewers however may be able to deconstruct the road filled landscape as well as his images of suburban architecture, because their phenomenon and history are widely known, simple, understood, and more blatantly ”New Suburbia” is part of the American experience.

However interpretation is insignificant when talking about Lutz’s work, as he dose not publicly acknowledge the Meadowlands series as a member of the documentary genre. He regards his minor manipulations on some images to have hampered that possibility. Lutz seemed to not want to appear to make any judgments on his subjects, some of whom where essentially models who his interactions with took the form of photo shoot instead of conversation. In other photographs this is not the case as Lutz described in his lecture, situations of discord and distress in two of his images one of the priest and also in the family from Louisiana. However he seemed to refuse to elaborate on the discourse and more over seemed weary of stating his opinion on them as if sweeping the underlying subject under the rug.

The Meadowlands series by Joshua Lutz is impressive, full of stimulating visual content. The deadpan compositional style used in this essay embodies a contemporary documentary esthetic. These images are all documents in the form of environmental portrait and landscape. This denial of this series as a document, distances Lutz from his subjects, and aides in the framing of his portraits as potentially of sensational interest. These images are similar to those of Richard Rinaldi whose similar project was shot across the country in bus stations and in places he traveled to. However a portion of Rinaldi's project “Figure and Ground” focused on Newark, New Jersey, where he photographed young Muslims dressed with traditional burkas as well as other locals of Newark. Rinaldi acknowledges the documents inherit in his work but seems not to bother investigating any story of discourse from his subjects. He instead interprets the subjects symbolically almost as a typology of contemporary American culture. This approach is simple in contrast to the approach of Joshua Lutz in his Meadowlands series, where he camouflages the subject in Art, while Richard Rinaldi presents visual facts, which at the same time are art and speak of photography’s

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 Brooklyn NY Oct 2, 2006  Joshua Blank

I have ridden my bicycle past a house in East Williamsburg that has an unusual old tree in its front yard. The house is worn and falling apart. Different parts of this house are held together by electric tape. I always see cats in the front yard. Once I saw the old man who lived there.

Motivated by curiosity and the need to complete assignments for my photojournalism class at The New School, I hung around this house all morning until the old man came out. When I walked, up to him he was leaving birdseed on the sidewalk. I asked him if he lived here and he immediately started talking. He told me one story after another. Vincent seemed to have something to say about almost everything. Our conversation raged from personal issues and sex to the topic of daytime TV programs like Judge Judy.

 I started taking pictures of his cat and slowly started including him in the pictures. Eventually I asked for him to pose with his cat.  He later held old pictures of himself in his weathered hands for me to shoot as well. Vincent is interesting because he had so much to say. He is kind and good hearted. He cares for stray cats and pigeons and is offended because some people associate pigeons with rats.  Vincent respects them as living things.

Notes written at the time of our meeting:
   Vincent has several pets, including two large dogs that are afraid to go outdoors. He also has a house cat and two outdoor cats. A young cat Vincent has not yet named is keeping us company. Another cat named Soup was missing since that morning. Vincent said that Soup would wander of sometimes, but never for too long.  Occasionally Vincent would walk around the block and Soup would pop up and rub up against his legs or follow him home.  Vincent was worried about Soup and continuously called his name.

Vincent and I walked around the block looking for Soup, but could not find him.  

Pigeons are among Vincent’s friends. He talks to them as if they are his children; its like he watched them grow up.  He keeps fresh water and birdseed for them out at all times. The birds were flying around the intersection then landed on Vincent’s roof, which triggers his excitement. “ They’ve come home.” he said.

Vincent’s wife has cancer and is unable to live with out a nurse. Vincent is unable to care for her as well. His wife now lives in a nursing home in New Jersey.  He told me she contracted cancer from working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  “I smoke cigarettes every day for twenty years and nothing happened but when I go to work, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard; I get cancer!” Vincent recalled her saying.   

His brother lived in the house with him for several years but died of poor health.

Vincent kept pictures from his youth in his wallet. In one he dressed like Elvis Presley whom he loved to talk about.

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by Michelle Casciolo

When it was built in 1907, the Packard Automotive Plant was a shining example of modern construction, and possibly the first example of the use of reinforced concrete. Its designer, Albert Kahn, was largely responsible for shaping the architectural identity of Detroit. Over sixty of his buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as of 2006, although some have since been demolished.

The independent Packard Corporation was the leading manufacturer of luxury cars throughout the 1930’s, and even though they survived the Great Depression, fallout from World War II and a failed corporate merger proved to be the end of the company by 1956.

The once-magnificent forty-acre facility was sold in 1957 for almost nothing, and although there was much potential to reuse the site, it was left to decay, as it remains half a century later. Simultaneously, Detroit itself began to rapidly decline, both structurally and politically, as corruption and crime took over. The current mayor, former football star Kwame Kilpatrick continues this tradition, notoriously making headlines daily.

In July of this year, my cousin and I were checking out forsaken sites to visit. When he showed me the Packard Plant on google earth, I could not believe the size of the place. A quick search on youtube turns up tons of videos, my favorite of which is “Packard Plant Pt2” from bagaauwk. There was no question; we had to go. Undeterred by the empty police car parked on the grass near the main entrance, we went inside. We found the Packard plant to be completely abandoned, with the exception of a few temporary scrap metal shops, and a complex society of pigeons. Despite the decades of destruction, it was hard not to be impressed with the decadence and grandeur that once was. The main lobby of the original office building had the remains of luxurious couches, a pool table and a bar. Wood paneling lined most of the walls, and you could almost still smell their cigars.  Beyond this, the buildings that surrounded it stretched farther than the eye could see, on both sides of East Grand Boulevard. It would take weeks to explore them all.

At the end of the day, it remains an eerily beautiful place, and it stands defiant against the forces of nature and man alike that wish to destroy it. 

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By Joshua Blank

The stretch of tracks known as the old Atlantic railway connects Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island’s freight lines with the rest of continental America.  Today it is seldom used to transport goods and is known to some as the “Dead Tracks”. It is a meeting place of graffiti writers, hobos, railroad workers and the people whose backyards and businesses run into the track area. I originally discovered it as a place to do graffiti safe from the authorities under its desolate underpasses and concrete enclosures. However, it became a hidden fortress. It was a site of endless adventure for me, as well as an escape from the real world.  I had always imagined a place like this, somewhere I could climb, hide and explore. It was “My Own Private Idaho” of which I had seen only in my dreams. It was here where I was protected from my life, society and its collective ideas.      

Six years later I returned for the first time since I had moved to San Francisco. I was accompanied by an old friend, with whom I had shared this earlier experience.  He picked me up from my Bushwick apartment at five in the morning. We walked to what was a major terminal of transportation many years ago, but also where these tracks began, the current site of a major disposal station for Waste Management.  While walking toward the entrance we were stopped by security because they saw our cameras.  After they made sure we where not terrorists we continued into the foggy, debris-filled track area, an adventure documented in these images shot one fall morning in Brooklyn and Queens.

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Paper Planez Organization: project by Lorena Costa and Hanifa Haris
Review by Joshua Blank

The Sir Lanka Project is a collaborative editorial, curatorial, and community project, responsibly and thoughtfully contributing to globalization, in a positive way.   It provides underprivileged children affected by the 2004 tsunami with education in areas vital to communication in this visually literate, media-centric and globalized world.  They are afforded with the technical know-how to take simple pictures as well as the experience of having shared and of viewing their images electronically through the platform of the World Wide Web.   Moreover, the students were provided with machine prints of their images, from which they later demonstrated their connection to the images through discussion both emotional and semantic. This exposure has potential to fuel their interests and their intellectual growth, which will rollover to their friends with whom they may share their knowledge and experience.

The Sir Lanka Project takes the material forms of performance, books, prints and a website.  The performance is imbedded in the socially conscientious act of teaching and constructing this long-term event.  Small spiral bound books of photographs taken by the children curated for each class have been produced as part of the artists portfolio. Collaborative photographs taken by Lorena Costa and Hanifa Haris are environmental portraits of some of those involved and are a document of the event itself.  A website stating the intent of the Paper Planez Organization presents all the projects’ visual elements to those who are interested on an international level.

The images created by the children are astonishing in their raw snapshot style. Each picture contains strong compositional quality reminiscent of Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency or Rineke Dijkstra’s portraits of children standing looking toward her on beaches.  It reminds me of early documentary photography of a journalistic style.  It is hard to imagine that these pictures were not taken by professionals but first time child photographers, because they are in a way more interesting then most student photography at Parsons.  
The second section of images completed where the environmental portraits taken by Hanifa and Lorena.  Shot in 6x6 format they contain pleasing compositional and tonal elements. The images reveal a closeness to the subject that seems candid, but also provide a view into the environment and signification to the place and time of the captured event. This is specifically evident in a t-shirt worn by a young man that advertises an American wrestler but is also one of the most visually stunning images from the series.

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