LIVIN’ IN THE HOOD at American Center in Prague

“LIVIN‘ IN THE HOOD – New York Street Life 1990 & 2013/14” by Jörg Rub­bert & Jür­gen Bür­gin

Exhib­it Infor­ma­tion:
Open­ing: June 3rd, 2025 at 05:00 p.m.
Clos­ing: Sept. 25th, 2025
Loca­tion: Amer­i­can Cen­ter of the US-Embassy Prague,
Tržiště 13, 118 01 Pra­ha 1, phone: +420 257 022 040
Web­site: https://www.americkecentrum.cz/en/

The exhi­bi­tion will be held at the Amer­i­can Cen­ter in Prague from June 3rd to Sept 25th. The exhi­bi­tion is based on the pho­to book of the same name pub­lished by the Ket­tler Ver­lag in Oct., 2024.

The pho­tographs chron­i­cle the per­son­al New York adven­tures of the two pho­tog­ra­phers and thus approach the city of New York from an unusu­al, sub­jec­tive per­spec­tive. The pic­tures take the view­er on a visu­al jour­ney back in time to 1990 and 2013/14 by com­par­ing the city from two dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives:
While Jörg Rub­bert pho­tographed New York in 1990 in atmos­pher­i­cal­ly dense, rough and ana­log black and white images, Jür­gen Bür­gin cap­tured the city and its res­i­dents in 2013/14 with his col­or­ful, nar­ra­tive pho­tographs.

What both have in com­mon is the the­mat­ic focus: They show the street and every­day life of New York and its bor­oughs and com­mu­ni­ties, as well as small­er and larg­er events and parades. There­with they pro­vide a pro­found insight into the real­i­ty of life of the city, that trans­formed itself dur­ing that era. The images give an impres­sion of what New York felt like dur­ing those years and draw a com­par­i­son about the social and polit­i­cal changes of the time.

For Jörg Rub­bert, the city as a devel­op­ing organ­ism is one of his pre­ferred pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects. He rep­re­sents the human­is­tic direc­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy and has pub­lished sev­er­al illus­trat­ed books about Paris, New York, and the Amer­i­can South. His pho­tographs have been shown at home and abroad and pub­lished in numer­ous media, includ­ing CNN, ZEIT, FAZ, Tele­vi­sion of Slo­va­kia, Pho­to Klas­sik, PHOTOGRAPHIE. He lives as a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Berlin.

For his pho­to trips, Jür­gen Bür­gin trav­elled reg­u­lar­ly to var­i­ous big cities in Asia, Amer­i­ca, and Europe. His pho­tographs have been shown in numer­ous exhi­bi­tions world­wide. His images are influ­enced by his decades of work in the film indus­try. Most recent­ly his pho­to book “PUNCH – A visu­al sto­ry” has been pub­lished. He lives and works as an author and pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Berlin, Ger­many.