Mapping NYC by Photograph

Currently on view at the New York Public Library: Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City. The exhibition consists of six New York based artists who have each put together a photographic project with his/her own take on surveying the city.

Bettina Johae (a friend from grad school) contributed Borough Edges, NYC, a multi-faceted project consisting of over 2400 photographs documenting the boundaries of each of New York's five boroughs. I've had the opportunity to see this project in various forms as Bettina developed it over the past few years and this current manifestation is the best so far. The installation consists of a hand drawn wall map alongside five synchronized digital slide shows (one for each borough), and a wall-mounted book of framed prints for each borough, pairing selected prints with their respective locations on the line map.

In addition, there is a comprehensive website mapping all of the photographs, and Bettina is leading various bicycle tours along sections of each borough's edges (yesterday was The Bronx tour). The Internet component and the bike tours are integral in a way, because they span the full spectrum of the project. Bettina made her photographs while cycling around the city and as a result the project is in some ways limited to her own personal real-life experience of the city's edges. The only way to really get that is to travel the map and see it for yourself. On the other hand, Bettina accumulated a large amount of visual data which couldn't possibly be fully represented or absorbed in a gallery setting. In that sense, the project has really become about organizing and disseminating this information in a meaningful and useful way, and the Internet is particularly well suited to that end.
http://digital.nypl.org/boroughedges/

All photographs from Borough Edges, NYC, by Bettina Johae, selected because they are of the Bronx & Manhattan borders surrounding my neighborhood.