The hustle and bustle of cars, people and other distractions in New York City often gets in the way of that perfect shot you want to snap of a beautiful building. A new exhibit of photographs from artist Marc Yankus explores what certain New York City sites would look like if time stood still and all of those distractions went away. In Yankus’ new exhibit,New York Unseen at ClampArt, visitors will find a series of images of recognizable New York City buildings isolated from people, traffic, and extraneous information so that the buildings themselves are on full display.
Yankus’ striking photographs of sites like the American Museum of Natural History, the Dakota, One Fifth Avenue and the Main Branch of the New York Public Library along with more pedestrian sites like a fence in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a streetscape in the West Village, show the structures standing on their own without surrounding distractions. There are no cars or people, often the trees are bare, and you see get the entire building in one panoramic swoop. The photographs celebrate the majesty and diversity of more than a century of urban architecture that you find in New York City. By eliminating movement and distraction, the artist distills his subjects down to their pure essence, revealing their souls and recognizing them as witnesses to the change of time.
Throughout the various shots on view, Yankus varies the angle from head-on images with precise symmetry to more dramatic views and aerial perspectives, displaying famous buildings and familiar city streets from unfamiliar vantage points. “In my portraits of New York’s buildings, I aim to mute some of the visual noise that can distract from their essential beauty, allowing the viewer to see the entirety of each building and in the process helping them see the city anew,” stated Yankus. “They are captive subjects, frozen in time, with history etched on their surfaces and inside the buildings themselves.”
New York Unseen is Yankus’ sixth solo show at the Clampart Gallery, where the works will be printed in large format. It will be on view from October 3 through November 16, 2019. The exhibition at ClampArt coincides with a solo show of Marc Yankus’ work at Grand Central Terminal. Organized by MTA Arts and Design, the exhibition is titled Landmark City, and will be on display in the lower level Dining Concourse through July 2020.
Nicole Saraniero is the Insider-in-Chief at Untapped New York, leading our Untapped New York Insiders membership program. Nicole graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science in Televis
