Lincoln Center c. 1961 - 1979

Curator: This gelatin silver print is titled "Lincoln Center" by Louis Draper, taken sometime between 1961 and 1979. It's an intriguing cityscape, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Yes, my first thought is the tension in this black and white image, the vulnerability of the man’s bare back juxtaposed with the rough texture of construction. It looks like an appeal, maybe even a kind of blessing over this…project in steel and concrete. Curator: That posture, those outstretched arms – it echoes centuries of iconography, figures in prayer or benediction. Given the subject is Lincoln Center, a temple of high art, is Draper perhaps commenting on art’s quasi-religious status in modern culture? Editor: I wonder if he was just hot. Look at all that dark material and metal scaffold around! What was it like to *be* the construction workers, toiling through the creation of Lincoln Center, the physical labour needed to produce such a monument to high culture? That labor has been totally eclipsed. Curator: A fair point! The angle hides his face, denying him individuality. The eye is drawn instead to those billboard signs behind him; faded cultural markers in themselves that will be replaced once this thing is built, like shedding old skin. Is the picture pointing at an older definition of labor, replaced by modern progress? Editor: Precisely! I’m thinking about the materiality of photography itself here as well; the gelatin silver print, born of chemistry and light, attempts to capture the dynamism of transformation. It captures labor by stripping it bare... like that dude. The act of physically making a photograph versus making a building— it’s like, does one get archived while the other goes unnoticed? Curator: Interesting. Perhaps the photographic image here stands as a symbolic representation, reminding us to look beyond the final performance, toward what had been lost behind all the grandeur. Editor: Yeah! Even forgotten, as labor often is. That being said, there’s a very elegant balance being struck.