Jeudi 11 Juin 2015 11:26:06 par Laure Chastant dans Expositions

Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography

Thanks to the development of new technology and social media, more photographs are created, viewed, and shared today than ever before. Public Eye, the first-ever retrospective survey of photography organized by NYPL, takes advantage of this moment to reframe the way we look at photographs from the past. What are some of 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? Ranging from photography’s official announcement in 1839 to manifestations of its current pervasiveness, this landmark exhibition, drawn entirely from the Library’s collections, explores the various ways in which photography has been shared and made public. Photography has always been social.

On Broadway: Representing digital traces of life in a twenty-first century city, On Broadway compiles images and other data collected along the thirteen miles of Broadway that span Manhattan.

Stereogranimator: View, create, and share 3D images from the stereograph collections of The New York Public Library and Boston Public Library. You can also stereogranimate your own photos via Flickr.

Open now. Ends January 3rd, 2016.


William Meyers: Outer Boroughs

Photography’s longtime love affair with New York City has typically been centered on Manhattan, rather than on any of the city’s four other boroughs, the “outer boroughs.” For nearly two decades, between 1990 and 2008, William Meyers sought to correct this imbalance by taking his camera to overlooked and underexplored locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The photographs in this exhibition represent Meyers’s selection of images from that project, printed as a portfolio and acquired by The New York Public Library in 2008. Organized visually rather than thematically or geographically, the images are meant to be encountered as the photographer did himself—“as a curious pedestrian willing to be surprised as he wanders the streets and boulevards of his city.” The photographs, the earliest of which were taken twenty-five years ago, also stand as visual reminders of New York City’s constant evolution. “The city I photographed,” says Meyers, “has been replaced by a much more vibrant one.”

The exhibition complements the Library’s presentation of Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography, currently on view in Gottesman Hall on the first floor, and coincides with the publication of William Meyers’s new book, Outer Boroughs: New York Beyond Manhattan.

Open now. Ends June 30th, 2015

©  William Meyers  "Snow brings out the sleds, even after midnight,"