A Photographic Memoir of NYC from Drew Carolan
NATIVE EYE- New York in the Late 20th Century came about after a conversation I had with my former boss and mentor Richard Avedon in 1994. While attending his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York city I commented on a photograph of a young boy on the streets of Harlem dated 1947. Having had access to Avedon’s archives over a two year period where I worked on IN THE AMERICAN WEST and countless other projects I was very familiar with his work. I mentioned to him that had never seen the image before which was one of his street portraits from early on in his career. Avedon replied that he went back to his archives with a fresh eye and discovered images that until then had gone virtually unnoticed. He suggested that I should reexamine my early work with a fresh eye. With that mindset I did just that and began to build a new body of work based on my findings.
Many of my early photographs were made in New York City. I began to question why I had taken certain photographs. Utilizing the camera as a reactionary tool some of the pictures were fleeting moments captured out of the corner of my eye. The sometimes blurry, haphazard approach delineating a decisive moment, perhaps out of fear of interrupting or intruding on a private moment.
The first photograph I found after my conversation with Avedon was a piece of torn film with three images on it. When I blew the picture up I was surprised at the content of the image. The summer of 1975 was a hot one. Here was a young kid of about 11 years old probably on his way back from a baseball game at the local park. He holds his baseball glove in one and hand and a bat in the other. His cut off shorts and tee shirt reflecting the casual nature of the game and the heat of the summer. He stops to cool off at an open fire hydrant that is flowing freely. An every day moment in the dog days of summer in the city.
After my initial discovery I kept digging, searching for those “moments’. With New York city as the focus, a folder spanning more than twenty five years began to accumulate and NATIVE EYE was born.