Brooklyn waterfronts spotlighted in MTA underground exhibit

Brooklyn’s changing industrial waterfront is now the subject of a brand new, large-scale exhibit. Where can you find it? Just head underground.

You read that right. As part of its Lightbox photographic art program, Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Arts & Design has installed new exhibits at the Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr and Bowling Green stations, displaying large-scale photographs of landscapes familiar to city residents.

The MTA’s major art program, which features “bright, vivid photographs” meant to “enliven subway passageways and the underground environment,” according to the agency, showcases the work of primarily New York-based photographers installed to welcome customers back from “summer holiday.”

The exhibit installed at Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr is  Nathan Kensinger’s “Industrial Twilight,” a series of photographs that shows sweeping views of Brooklyn’s changing industrial waterfront.

“As Brooklyn goes through enormous changes, the Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr station – which also has gone through major changes recently — is the perfect place for a look at the nearby waterfront and its shifting tides from industrial to the new, from the past to the present,” said Lester Burg, senior manager at MTA Arts & Design. “Nathan Kensinger looks at these transforming spaces with a reverent eye, capturing a moment in time for commuters on the go.”

The large-scale lightboxes, measuring approximately 45 by 66 inches, are illuminated from within and the images are printed on duratrans film by local providers, according to MTA Arts & Design.

The agency describes Kensinger’s photos as an “alternate perspective of New York’s waterfront.

“He was fascinated by the evidence of communities undergoing change, especially in Brooklyn, where heavy industry and manufacturing plants from the last century have morphed into ruins and then into residential housing, parks and commercial development,” MTA Arts & Designs writes. “‘Industrial Twilight’ shows the eerie stillness of places where industry thrived, as in an image of a canoeist gliding down the Gowanus Canal past a still-active concrete plant and an F train in the background, and in photos of the pre-transformation waterfront at Bush Terminal and the Domino Sugar refinery.”

 

 

Comments

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.