Below is part of an art exhibit my buddy, Bill, curated on Valentine's Day. The peeping tom snapshots of the photos are mine, but the text is all his. View and read at will.
A Relationship Left for Dead on the Lower East Side
Cuchifritos Gallery / Project Space
A few years back my old friend, Patrick Cunningham, handed me a photo album he'd found lying on the curb somewhere on the Lower East Side. He knew that I had a soft spot for "found photography" and figured I'd appreciate the anonymous trove.
I went home that day and spent a considerable amount of time pouring over the album. From what I can tell, it is the chronicle of a gay couple's relationship through a good number of years in the 90's. The pictures are intimate, personal, and, as one might expect, range from silly to sober. Haircuts evolve, fashions change, weight is gained and lost. A collection of tiny moments memorialized but nothing special, really, aside from the fact that this carefully constructed record of a relationship was left on a curb in the Lower East Side.
Revisiting the album after some time, I noticed something unique about it: The two men never appear in the same picture. They never sit next to nor hold one another. They never ask friends, relatives, or strangers to take a snapshot of them together. Each man simply poses for the other, the camera lens uniting them. These pictures tell a story of isolated admiration/adoration made manifest only through the architect of the album itself.
I often wonder if the couple is still together. I hope to meet them one day and, as difficult as it would be for me to part with it, return the album to one or both of them.
--Bill Previdi,
Independent Curator, NYC
Here's hoping what we find in this life is worth keeping a while. I'm off to make some images of my own. Overseas. Heading EAST.
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