Big City of Dreams

What Makes It Great? / Featured / February 10, 2016

New York, New York, big city of dreams

And everything in New York ain’t always what it seems

You might get fooled if you come from out of town

But I’m down by law and I know my way around

– Grandmaster Flash

“People in New York, 1998” gelatin silver print by Peter Kayafas (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

New York City: three words that flood the mind with vivid imagery whether we grew up there or merely fantasized through pictures and words. The biggest and busiest American city famously concentrates the best and worst of everything in one dense, sprawling metropolis. In “New York: Three Views” at Gallery Kayafas in Boston’s South End through February 27, 2016, photographers Peter Kayafas, Aaron Rose and Lynn Saville offer distinctive soliloquies, from past and present, on this “big city of dreams”.

“People in New York, 1999” gelatin silver print by Peter Kayafas (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

Peter Kayafas tenders his portrait of the city through its people. From 1993 to 2003 (for the most part, a less suspicious era), he roamed streets bathed in bright sun and deep shadow, stoked with the “urge to stare longer” that is native to all documentary photographers, equipped with medium format camera and B&W film. “People in New York” catches subjects both oblivious and aware, framing them front and center with a selective focus that accentuates the contrast of being solitary in a bustling city. In each portrait, Kayafas lures our attention by interrupting the internal dialog of his subjects, creating a signature “stare” that embraces the individuality in each “everyman”.

“People in New York, 1994” gelatin silver print by Peter Kayafas (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

“Untitled #18, 1963-65/2005” photogravure by Aaron Rose (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

During the demolition of New York City’s Penn Station from 1963 to 1966, photographer Aaron Rose would sneak onto the site after the workers had left, balancing along girders and climbing through rubble, in an attempt to save the architectural masterpiece in the only way he knew how – on film. After processing his first roll, he was so despondent that he stashed the rest of his exposed film in the freezer, where it remained for decades. Negatives from “The Last Days of Penn Station” were retrieved in a degraded state reminiscent of the ruins they depicted and led to the creation of photogravures to optimize what was left on Rose’s negatives. The resulting prints are delicate, dreamy gems. Details are misty, yet discernible, like a mitigating fog enveloping the harsh circumstances Rose observed: the stalwart structure surrounded in rubble, the stopped clock amid ruins, the sculpted angel swathed in chains. Rose’s careful compositions arrest time, paradoxically extending the demise, creating images at once lost and found.

“Untitled #16, 1963-65/2005” photogravure by Aaron Rose (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

“Brooklyn Bridge Park Construction, New York City” chromogenic print by Lynn Saville (courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston).

In “Dark City”, the only contemporary photographs on view, Lynn Saville gathers time into long-exposure images of the city in the hours just before dawn. Shooting mostly places and spaces under renovation using available light, color film and a large format camera, her images resonate with warmth and vibrancy, conferring a sentimental cast to the empty streets and structures. Tight compositional tension magnifies the acute absence, suspending viewers in a surreal state of night and day, vacancy and renewal. From sparkling panoramas to intimate interior spaces shimmering with reflected light from the street, Saville’s images whisper and romance the viewer.