NYAB Event - Ruben Natal-San Miguel "NY, NY: The Concrete Jungle"

Ruben Natal-San Miguel "NY, NY: The Concrete Jungle"

Kris Graves Projects

This event has ended.

+Kris Graves Projects presents the first exhibition, by photographer Ruben Natal-San Miguel, curated by world renowned photographer Matthew Pillsbury. The show, NY, NY: The Concrete Jungle is a culmination of a 5-year long survey project. Like an explorer trekking into unknown regions of the “Jungle” streets of New York City, photographer Ruben Natal-San Miguel travels in the footsteps of visionary photographers such as the likes of Helen Levitt, Bruce Davidson, Louis Faurer, and Robert Frank.

While NY City has a rich tradition of street photography, Ruben Natal-San Miguel brings this historic street photographic style forward into the new millennium with vivid living color. But Ruben is more than just an observer, for the past five years during the summer months; Ruben has traveled by bicycle throughout Upper Manhattan, searching for what it’s like to live in the Big Apple. For this is his chosen home, like many New Yorkers, Ruben is a transplant, eagerly coming to NY City to make his way in this School of Hard Knocks. As a trained architect he clearly sees both the concrete form and its human function, in particular, Ruben focused the viewer’s eye on the unseen. In this exhibition, the overlooked citizens, and environments are his subject, these are things most people cannot or choose not to see. For, this is not your posh “Sex and The City” Manhattan which people clamor for, but here, Ruben has been able to find, a vibrant and colorful vision of that other Manhattan.

Like Ruben’s Philadelphia friend and influence, photographer Zoe Strauss, he elevates these “unseen” people and places with poetic vision, working to create an endearing meaningful life lesson of what it’s like when the human spirit makes the best of what others may consider to be so little. This photographic project captures the beauty and struggle of everyday life which resonates as a social document of our time, and as a sheer and powerful visual art.

-Mike Hoeh