May 17 – September 12, 2014
Harlem Library/NYPL
9 West 124th Street
New York, NY 10027

STATEMENT
My photographs celebrate overlooked areas. Vacant spaces are depicted in a fragile light. Surface qualities are examined with an abstract formality while documenting the markings of places on the verge of disappearing. Emphasizing disregarded, eccentric details, I convey the presence of people in their absence. I frame odd juxtapositions with personal and cultural objects to offer insight into what is historically valued. My images reflect on the uncertainties underlying an evolving American landscape.

In 2004, I set about taking medium-format, color negative images of neighborhoods in the borough of Queens. Derived from my daily experience, I captured the visual cues of an illuminated landscape unhampered by tall buildings, which generated a feeling of a lost time. This series presents a fractured multiplex of imagery and elicits a cinematic play on surface qualities and graphics in the forms of lines, blocks of color, volumes of shape, and reflections of interiors. As a photographic documentation, this series offers insight into the translation of place as it observes the Queens of yesterday, before it disappears in renovation and development.

Special thanks to Harlem Library NYPL for hosting this exhibition.

Read more about Michelle HERE.