photography in all its forms

New York, New York

Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness
in New York City Parks

Joel Meyerowitz and Phillip Lopate
in Conversation
Talk and Book Signing

Thursday, November 5, 2009
7:00 pm

FREE

Barnes and Noble
150 East 86th Street
New York, New York
(212) 369-2180

Join master photographer Joel Meyerowitz and author Phillip Lopate for a talk and book signing on the occasion of the publication of Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks (Aperture, October 2009). This compelling body of work is the result of a unique commission Meyerowitz received from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to document, interpret, and celebrate one of the city's greatest legacies: nearly nine thousand acres of parks in the five boroughs in the five boroughs that still exist close to their original pristine state, as well as areas within parks that have been left to revert to wilderness. To accompany these magnificent images, Lopate contributed an essay that expands on his notion of the urban walk-poem. (Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg contributed the book's forword.) Meyerowitz is the first photographer to document New York City's parks since the 1930s, when they were photographed as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA program.

An exhibition of this series will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York, October 9, 2009-March 7, 2010.

Joel Meyerowitz (born in New York City, 1938) is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 international exhibitions. He is a two-time Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of both NEA and NEH awards, as well as a recipient of the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis. He has published over fifteen books, including Cape Light (1978) and Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2006). He lives in New York City and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Phillip Lopate has written more than fifteen critically acclaimed books, including Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan (2004). His writing has appeared in Harper's, the New York Times, and the Paris Review. Lopate is a professor at Columbia University, Hofstra University, and the New School, all in New York, and Bennington College, Vermont.

related exhibition

The publication of Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks and the accompanying exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York are supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Deutsche Bank and the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts. Further support for the exhibition is provided by Richard Gilder and Lois Chiles; Thomas L. Kempner, Jr.; the Midler Family Foundation; the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation; Marian S. Heiskell; and Mrs. Frank Perdue. Additional support for the publication and a traveling exhibition organized by Aperture Foundation is provided by the E.T. Harmax Foundation, Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, and Roddy Gonsalves and Paul Pincus. Joel Meyerowitz extends a special thanks to HP for their generous support of this project.

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