Frank Schwere "Detroit"
Schroeder Romero & Shredder
This event has ended.
On view with Marsha Pels's sculpture are four photographs by Frank Schwere from his series Detroit. Shown in New York for the first time, these large C-prints depict the ruinous state of America's once great motor city. Photographing in 2008-2009, at the height of the national recession, these images are absent of people and movement and become silent monuments to the industry and metropolis that was. They are not, however, merely epitaphs to a lost city and the passing of American industrialization but in their scale and composition they are elevated records of what still exists-what continues to be grand and what can return. Carefully positioning his view camera, such as in the flat abstracted matrix of broken windows in the Fisher Body Plant 21 or the extended perspective of the vaulted ceiling and arches of the Michigan Central Depot, Schwere creates environments that are both completely contained and seemingly endless, forcing us to question whether we are looking back to the past or looking forward to a rebirth. Schwere was born in Flensburg, Germany in 1966. He studied at Freie Kunstschule Stuggart, and Photography at Fachhochschule fuer Gestaltung, Bielefeld in the early 1990s. He also studied at the International Center of Photography, New York in 1997, living and working in New York until 2009. He currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand.
[Image: Frank Schwere "Arcade (Michigan Central Depot, 240 West Vernor Street)" Detroit, MI (Detail), 2008, c-print, 50 x 40 in.]
Media
Schedule
from January 12, 2012 to February 11, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-01-12 from 18:00 to 20:00