Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography - review by Sarah Gluck

April 22nd 2015

Where: New York Public Library

When: Wednesday, April 22nd 2015 @ 4 pm



Review:

Anyone who walks along Fifth Avenue and 42nd street can witness the extravagant New York City Public Library building. The library, which has been opened since 1911, is dazzling from the outside in. The soft smooth tile floors and staircases are spread out among long hallways containing illuminating flower shaped grand chandeliers that hang high above your head from the vaulted ceilings that contain the most angelic murals that are painted which give the impression of looking through the ceiling up to the sky. As you take in the libraries unique and romanticizing aesthetic, people are constantly walking in and out from using the facilities public access study rooms, checking out books, etc. In this case, on the first floor, Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography, is an on going free exhibit being held now until January 3rd, 2016.
The exhibit is the first retrospective survey of photography organized by the New York Public Library, which addresses the social aspect of how photography is taken and shared so accessibly by anyone who has a smart phone or uses any social media and asks us the question of how our present might inform the way we look at photographs from the past. The opening statement for the exhibit proposes a few questions before you even enter the gallery. These questions include, “What are the platforms and networks through which photographs have been shared? In what ways have we, as photography’s public and one of its subjects, been engaged over time? To what ends has the street served as a venue for photographic practice since its beginnings? And of more recent concern, are we risking our privacy in pursuit of a more public photography?” This statements inquiry adds a whole new mindset going into looking at the photographs on display.
 Once in the gallery, one is surrounded by hundreds of images. Black and white film, digital, sepia photos of people and places all over the world, and current snapshots that range from todays current day all the way back until photography first began as a great phenomenon.  The lighting is pleasant and like the rest of the library everyone is silent, which really adds a certain vulnerability to viewing each photograph.  A few interesting photographs that grabs a viewers attention right off the bat could be a few images from the photo series Portraits of People Living with Aids, by the photographer Harvey Stein. In this particular series Stein focuses his lens towards people by giving a face to the disease of aids from 1992 – 1995 by taking portraits of aids victims. Right along side Steins works is a series by an Australian photographer, Stephan Dupont. Dupont, known for working as a photojournalist in some of the world’s most dangerous places, took a series of photographs of men in the platoon with which he embedded in Afghanistan to answer the question, “Why am I a Marine?” The marines all wrote their responses in a small journal where Dupont later added along side every photograph of the fighting men’s portrait. This series Weapons Platoon Delta Co. 2D LAR USMC Afghanistan 2009, were printed as gelatin silver prints that originally came from being Polaroid negatives.
In addition to photographic series, there are single portraits, group shots, city landscapes, fashion images, photographs with a common theme, and so on. If you can think of it, it’s there. The variety and the amount of photos are impressive without being overwhelming.
One of the more interesting displays in this particular exhibition is the wall that presents digital images that everyday people have posted on Broadway Ave all combined together. On Broadway complies images and other data collected along the thirteen miles of Broadway that span Manhattan, representing digital traces of life in a twenty first century city. In this display the viewer feels almost involved or engraved into the gallery itself, as well as getting a good touch and feel for the city they are currently visiting. Overall I would give the gallery a solid 9/10 for being free and amusing entertainment.