HOME at The Museum of the City of New York

Until August 27, 2023 the Muse­um of the City of New York at the Upper East Side shows the is group pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion HOME. It’s inspired by the Museum’s land­mark pre­sen­ta­tion of the same name in 2000, this series will occur every three years and engage dif­fer­ent themes and issues of the con­tem­po­rary city.

The first install­ment exam­ines the idea of “Home.” At its most prac­ti­cal, “Home” refers to the lit­er­al places we dwell. Yet it can also stand for fam­i­ly, or the com­mu­ni­ties of which we choose to be a part. This vital and com­plex con­cept aris­es in often sur­pris­ing ways in our urban con­text, from high­ly per­son­al expe­ri­ences to debates over pub­lic pol­i­cy. This exhi­bi­tion aims to look at how artists have respond­ed to and inter­pret­ed these issues.

In recent years, the city has strug­gled to reck­on not only with the ongo­ing dynam­ics of eco­nom­ic and racial inequal­i­ty but also with mas­sive chal­lenges unleashed by the COVID-19 cri­sis. This exhi­bi­tion includes pho­tog­ra­phy and video work made over the past sev­er­al years that cre­ative­ly doc­u­ments and inter­prets this chang­ing cityscape and the dis­parate respons­es and expe­ri­ences of New York­ers, strad­dling the sto­ries of the city before, dur­ing, and after the pan­dem­ic.

The select­ed work encom­pass­es a vari­ety of perspectives—as diverse as the city itself—and con­sid­er a range of pic­ture mak­ing approach­es. From the per­son­al and inti­mate to the mon­u­men­tal and col­lec­tive, the pho­tographs in this exhi­bi­tion invites view­ers to see the city they thought they knew through fresh per­spec­tives. [Exhi­bi­tion text]

HOME is a beau­ti­ful per­son­al series about the rela­tion of New York­ers to the city as their home. For me one of the great dis­cov­er­ies is Iri­na Rozovsky’s about Prospect Park in Brook­lyn from the years 2011–2013. It shows life of the park as if it’s in any rur­al areas in the world, no build­ings, only a few peo­ple enjoy­ing the nature of the park.

Gail Albert Hal­a­ban opens the view into the flats of the New York­ers, with the pho­to col­lage of the series „Out My Win­dow”. The image shown at the muse­um is called ‚Valen­tines, East 10^th Street, Green­wich Vil­lage, New York, 2022”. We are trans­formed into mild voyeurs, get­ting an excit­ing look into flats of peo­ple from this city.

Naima Green presents Pur­suit, 2019, por­traits of New York­ers as play­ing cards – or col­lect­ing cards? A beau­ti­ful series of por­traits, most­ly of women, a beau­ti­ful, excit­ing series.

Neil Kramer dis­cov­ers some­how fun­ny, some­how strange views into the time of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic with his series ‚Quar­an­tine in Queens’.

HOME is touch­ing, emo­tion­al, a bril­liant col­lec­tion, a must see at our New York vis­it at this beau­ti­ful muse­um. Sean Cor­co­ran and Thea Quiray Tagle did a fan­tas­tic job dis­cov­er­ing and curat­ing this won­der­ful pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tion.