Changing Queens

This photo series focuses on landscape traces of the creative destruction at work in Queens, New York, one of America’s most distinctive urban areas. Torn between the the centripetal force of New York City as a hub of international capitalism and the centrifugal consequences of its cultural diversity and economic disparity, Queens displays a contradictory and disorderly dynamism. Contrasts and juxtapositions within and between images explore the borough’s transformations amidst the detritus of a disposable civilization. To the extent that Queens preserves a past, it can be found in its cemeteries and parks, land beyond the reach of developers that bears witness to the land’s erstwhile service to the metropolis by burying its dead and celebrating its achievements in world’s fairs. Meanwhile, the borough’s present is a jumble of McMansions and basement apartments; glass towers and abandoned blocks; decrepit malls and prison-like schools. Queens is a microcosm of America, crowding within its borders the physiognomy of a continent: a tale of two countries in one borough.

“Changing Queens” embraces the tradition of documentary-style photography of the vernacular landscape. In so doing, it seeks to help us see and understand Queens and, through it, aspects of the contemporary world. The photo series renders homage with its title to one of its inspirations: Changing New York by Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland.