How New York artists have made use of the city's run-down lofts,
neglected piers, vacant lots, and deserted streets.
When the real estate bust of the 1970s hit New York City, artists found
their own mixed uses for the city's run-down lofts, abandoned piers,
vacant lots, and deserted streets, and photographers and filmmakers
documented their work. Gordon Matta-Clark turned a sanitation pier into
the celebrated work Day's End, and Betsy Sussler filmed its making;
Harry Shunk made a photographic series from Willoughby Sharp's Projects:
Pier 18 (which included work by Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, Dan Graham,
Gordon Matta-Clark, and William Wegman, among others); Cindy Sherman
staged some of her Untitled Film Stills on the same city streets. Mixed
Use, Manhattan documents and illustrates the most significant of these
projects as well as more recent works by artists who continue to engage
with the city's public, underground, and improvised spaces. The book
(which accompanies a major exhibition) focuses on several important
photographic series: Peter Hujar's 1976 nighttime photographs of
Manhattan's West Side; Alvin Baltrop's Hudson River pier photographs
from 1975-1985, most of which have never before been shown or published;
David Wojnarowicz's Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979), the first of
Wojnarowicz's works to be published; and several of Zoe Leonard's
photographic projects from the late 1990s on. The book includes 70 color
and 130 black-and-white images; a special section on visual
documentation of performances and related activities, arranged by artist
Louise Lawler; Glenn Ligon's text piece, Housing in New York: A Brief
History, 1960-2007 (2007); "Losing the Form in Darkness," an
autobiographical story by David Wojnarowicz; and essays by prominent art
historians.
