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When I was teaching at Cooper Union in the first year or two of the 50s, someone told me how I could get onto the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike. I took three students and drove from somewhere in the Meadows to New Brunswick. It was a dark night and there were no lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings or anything at all except the dark pavement moving through the landscape of the flats, rimmed by hills in the distance, but punctured by stacks, towers, fumes and colored lights. This drive was a revealing experience. Minimalist artist Tony Smith recounting his sheer awe of the built environment during the transformative drive that made him reconsider the entire meaning of art.
Robust infrastructure has become a defining characteristic of modern civilizations. It enables the economic productivity that drives prosperity and confers the public safety that citizens of the developed world have come to expect. Indeed, a states (or regimes) legitimacy and competence are often measured in large part by the sophistication of its infrastructure, as the manifestation of a governments efficacy.
Robust infrastructure has become a defining characteristic of modern civilizations. It enables the economic productivity that drives prosperity and confers the public safety that citizens of the developed world have come to expect. Indeed, a states (or regimes) legitimacy and competence are often measured in large part by the sophistication of its infrastructure, as the manifestation of a governments efficacy. The inadequacies of New Orleans levee system exposed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, compounded with a federal response that left much to be desired, undermined public confidence in government at many levels. On the other hand, often awe-inspiring in its colossal scale and technical complexity, infrastructure sometimes serves as a functional monument to national accomplishment, attracting curious and faithful pilgrims to even the most remote sites. In this way, the modern state is both literally and figuratively constructed through infrastructure.
Certainly, political actors in control of public finances have frequently used infrastructure as the cornerstone of national renewal. Adolph Hitler, for example, was responsible for one of the largest infrastructure improvement projects in German history. In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to reinvigorate the economy during the Great Depression through large power generation projects, including the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired otherwise unemployed workers to build and maintain the countrys roads, bridges, and dams, and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) paid photographers to document this progress, with an eye toward conveying optimism. More recently, in an effort to rev up the sluggish economic recovery, President Obama has proposed billions in spending to improve the nations roads, airports, and railways.
The social dislocations associated with large infrastructure are sometimes commensurate with the scale of the projects. The Three Gorges Dam in China, praised for providing much of the countrys electricity and alleviating the threat of catastrophic regional floods, permanently submerged 1,200 cities and villages and displaced more than a million people.
Public Works examines geographically and chronologically diverse examples of built infrastructure captured through the lenses of mid-20th century to contemporary artists.
Public Works examines geographically and chronologically diverse examples of built infrastructure captured through the lenses of mid-20th century to contemporary artists. Modern infrastructure shares with photography a peculiar history, as the medium is particularly well suited to documenting the grandeur of large public works . Cumulating from the Museum of Contemporary Photographys permanent collection and the Midwest Photographers Project, as well as from external loans, Public Works includes works by more than 50 international artists. Martin Parr s Boring Postcards collection and Merle Porter s 1950s postcards of the Dwight D. Eisenhower interstate highway system draw our attention to how public infrastructure became tourist spectacle in the postwar era. Frank Breuer s photographs of tangled and antiquated, but still essential urban power lines in US cities, along with Tyagan Miller s astute observations of trees that have been pruned or dramatically truncated to avoid the telephone and power lines, stand in striking contrast to prevailing assumptions about this countrys technological sophistication. Tim Davis photographs the desks of Washingtons political insiders, oftentimes the decision maker for public-funded infrastructure projects. Video and performance artist Chen Qiulin makes poetic films of the chaotic dismantling of cities for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and of the effects of modernization on the multiple generations living in the Sichuan province of southwestern China. Armin Linke has photographed major infrastructure projects all over the world, including the workers on a prayer break at the Ghazi Barotha hydroelectric plant in Hattian, Pakistan. The Center for Land Use Interpretation , a research organization based in Culver City, California has filmed the Houston Petrochemical Corridor, whose massive petroleum refineries and shipping yards inspire contemplation. And adventurous artists expose the public to hidden infrastructure systems that most people take for granted, as Gina LeVay goes 800 feet below Manhattan to document Sandhogsthe miners tunneling bedrock to create the 60-mile-long city water tunnel that will provide fresh water to New Yorkers. Generally regarded as profoundly boring, infrastructure, we see through this work, has complex political, economic, and social dimensions.
Natasha Egan, Associate Director and Curator
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KünstlerInnen: Berenice Abbott , Harold Allen , Stephen Alvarez , David Avison , Tom Bamberger , Hubert Blanz , Andrew Borowiec , Frank Breuer , Mary Ellen Carroll , Alejandro Cartagena , Center for Land Use Interpretation , Chen Qiulin , Barbara Ciurej , Lindsay Lochman , Bruce Davidson , Tim Davis , Mitch Epstein , Terry Evans , Walker Evans , Robert Frank , Lee Friedlander , Ron Gordon , Eirik Johnson , Kenneth Josephson , Jay King , Viktor Kolár , Dorothea Lange , Russell Lee , Gina LeVay , Ogle Winston Link , Armin Linke , Vera Lutter , Danny Lyon , David Maisel , Rhondal McKinney , Tyagan Miller , Richard Misrach , Carl Mydans , Martin Parr , John Pfahl , David Plowden , Merle Porter , James Rotz , Victoria Sambubaris , Daniel Shea , Toshiro Shibata , Mark Slankard , Michael A. Smith , Jamey Stillings , Stan Strembicki , Bob Thall , Sze Tsung Leong , Catherine Wagner , Andy Warhol , Jay Wolke , Thomas Weinberger , Xu Xixian , Xu Jianrong
