Where they swam is a photo series documenting McCarren Park Pool in a state of decay following 28 years of abandonment. Built in 1936 during the hottest American summer on record, the pool witnessed thousands of childhoods pass through its water, as the Great Depression came and went. By the 1980’s, the pool fell empty, as a neighborhood changed around it. Speckled with turquoise paint and layers of graffiti, weeds began to grow from below its surface, nature taking over, the ticket booth becoming an abstract painting of rust. The ... Read more

Where they swam is a photo series documenting McCarren Park Pool in a state of decay following 28 years of abandonment. Built in 1936 during the hottest American summer on record, the pool witnessed thousands of childhoods pass through its water, as the Great Depression came and went. By the 1980’s, the pool fell empty, as a neighborhood changed around it. Speckled with turquoise paint and layers of graffiti, weeds began to grow from below its surface, nature taking over, the ticket booth becoming an abstract painting of rust. The changing rooms overflowed with dead leaves, the pool basin cracking with the changing seasons. Now, in the Summer of 2012, the space will re-open with a fresh coat of aquamarine, decay paved over, inhabited by a new group of residents, the memories of those who once spent their summers in its water mere reflections in its polished surface.

The series deals with the cycle of urban space and the passage of time- how we create, inhabit, abandon, and eventually come back to this place. It is about inevitably returning to a structure that has stubbornly inhabited the Brooklyn landscape far longer than the majority who now call it home. The same pool- once crowded with working class immigrants, a refuge for children who swam in the polluted waters of the east river; now, surrounded by luxury condominiums, the apex of Brooklyn gentrification with a $50 million renovation.

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Other relics is a collection of images from spaces in flux during various travels in the U.S. and abroad. Like the decaying pool, these are sacred spaces, preserved in an instant of time that can never be recovered. Just as Alaska’s forests, pristine and untouched, are increasingly mined for resources, Israel’s streets are contentious meeting points of race, religion, and political conflict, where the landscape is ever changing. The images together form a reliquary, where the viewer can re-inhabit a space that is at once still, real, and already gone.