March 25, 2020 – SOCIAL DISTANCING NOT BEING PRACTICED AT THE PENITENTIARY

By admin

SOCIAL DISTANCING NOT BEING PRACTICED

AT THE PENITENTIARY

WEDNESDAY,  MARCH 25, 2020

BEN SHAHN’S NEW YORK(C)
NYU GREY ART GALLERY 2001

“I am a social painter or photographer…I find difficulty in making distinctions between photography and painting. Both are pictures.”–Ben ShahnA surge in radical political movements, efforts at social reform, and attempts by diverse populations to establish a national identity contributed to the upheaval that engulfed the United States during the Depression. Many artists who were radicalized by the events of the day became activists and sought work on New Deal relief programs. Among them was Ben Shahn (1898–1969), an artist whose socialist Jewish family had fled czarist Russia in 1906 and settled in Brooklyn.In the early 1930s, Shahn abandoned his interest in European modern art, creating instead incisive realist images, depicting what he called the “social view,” that addressed the issues dominating public debate. The development of Shahn’s social-realist vision was infused by his commitment to leftist politics and his interest in the cultural force of mass media during the 1930s. Shahn first became interested in photography at a time when rotogravure reproductions of photographs in newspapers and magazines served as essential source material for his polemic paintings and satiric caricatures. News photographs inspired Shahn to imbue such works as his famous gouache series The Passion of Sacco–Vanzetti as well as The Mooney Case with a quality of reportage that was favorably noted by many of his contemporaries. Although he became widely known at this time as a painter, muralist, and graphic artist, he was also making formidable photographs.Between 1932 and 1935, Shahn joined the vanguard of the social-documentary movement, making street photographs that defined life in New York City through the prosaic activities and expressive gestures of ordinary people. In addition to photographing activity on the sidewalks of lower and midtown Manhattan, he documented demonstrations for expanded work-relief programs and protest marches against social injustice in and around Union Square and City Hall. In preparation for one of his earliest murals, he also photographed inmates and prison officials at Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary and the New York City Reformatory. All of Shahn’s New York photographs address such topical issues as unemployment, poverty, immigration, and social reform and their connection to race and class.Shahn used a handheld 35-millimeter Leica camera. This tiny, lightweight apparatus allowed him to move unobtrusively through the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of New York City, documenting daily life. He oriented his camera horizontally and tended to photograph at eye level and at fairly close range, thereby placing the viewer in the midst of the scene. He found that by affixing to his camera a miniature periscope-style attachment known as an angle viewfinder, he could capture passersby unaware. The artist could thus present his subjects “immersed in a private world,” as Bernarda Bryson Shahn observed. This “arresting of unconscious mood,” she affirmed, constituted “one of the distinguishing marks of all of Shahn’s photographic work.”Compelling examples of social-realist art in their own right, Shahn’s New York photographs also inspired many of his most important paintings, murals, and drawings. Ben Shahn’s New York explores how the artist’s earliest photographs provided him with a fundamental means of interpreting urban life in modern times and shaped a highly influential documentary aesthetic that would influence and characterize his work for decades.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

This is the sixth in our series of historical articles from the RIHS Archives

These are some of the images Shahn took of the Penitentiary. 

Editorial

As I sit here writing this edition, a show is on TV about the “Food that Built America”,.  Other favorites are any “Law and Order”, for early morning entertainment try “How It’s Made” on the Science Channel.  Yes, I watch the news but the soothing voice of Sam Waterson makes me feel better.

I have to thank my great support system at the CARTER BURDEN SENIOR CENTER.  I volunteer there and  we “seniors” are being well taken care of with meals to go, boxed shelf stable meals, and the support you get from hearing from the staff; Lisa, Fred, Ulisa, Pat, Nancy and Brenda.

Our building staff, tram staff, RIOC staff, are all at work whether in person or from home keeping the island on an even keel.

Thanks to our neighbors who took out their sewing machines and made masks for our island workers.

To my friends at Coler, we miss you.  We miss the guys from Open Doors.  We know how hard it is to be confirmed to the campus and not be able to travel the island and beyond,  To the Coler staff and the incoming Bellevue staff, we salute you.  We will welcome our ROOSEVELT ISLAND MEDICAL CENTER patients starting this week.(The name of the 350 bed hospital units being set-up at Coler).

There is a quote from Revered Oliver Chapin “Keep on keeping on”

Judith Berdy

TOMORROW
“The Worst Prison in the World”

Text by Judith Berdy

Edited by Melanie Colter and Dottie Jeffries