There is an old warehouse on Second Street, just blocks from the Grove Street PATH Station. It has been vacant for years. It appears to be unloved, uncared for, a victim of neglect – and timeless in this ever-changing city.
Jersey City photographer Arthur Bruso seeks out subjects like this one.
“There are two questions that are always asked of photographs: ‘when’ and ‘where.’ This is how we’ve learned to relate to photography, as a document of an event,” Bruso said. “However, these questions are rarely asked of painting. I approach photography more like painting; they are less about the specific where and when and more about a concept.”
‘I approach photography more like painting.’ – Arthus Bruso
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His work can be seen as part of a downtown exhibit titled “Falling City” now on display at the exhibition venue Curious Matter.
Haunting
One of his most haunting images is titled “My Death,” a photo of what appears to be an old boarded up apartment building.
“I seem to be moving away from the figure and find myself exploring the strange expressiveness of the landscape, especially the landscape that has been transformed by human activity, or shows evidence of human activity,” Bruso said when asked about the themes and central questions that crop up in his work.
A photographer since about the age of six, Bruso said the camera became “a magic box that helped me to see in a different way. I’ve had to wear glasses since kindergarten and the camera taught me how to see in a new way.”
Photography, he added, gives him the ability to “capture both what I see and the interpretation of how I see it. And, of course, the immediacy of the process.”
Prior to Falling City Bruso’s work was included in a group show titled Naming the Animals, which was a collaborative exhibition between Jersey City’s Curious Matter and Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn.
The exhibit
Curious Matter is presenting a one-man retrospective exhibit of Bruso’s photos, his first local private show since 2002. Sixty pieces are on display through Aug. 28.
Raymond Mingst, who curated “Falling City,” has said Bruso’s work “utilizes his photographs as an ever-expanding vocabulary. He has an almost encyclopedic collection from which to draw. Since his first camera, he never stopped taking pictures. There are images taken during boyhood explorations in the woods, others are experiments from student photo classes, others are more recent. From this visual history he’ll reprint and reconsider, sometimes juxtaposing or repeating images to communicate new ideas. Every photograph he takes becomes part of an on-going investigation and meditation. The images are not about dramatic, decisive moments, but rather an accumulation of observations. They are instances that might otherwise go ignored.”
This is the second Bruso exhibit Mingst has curated.
“The gallery setting offers people the opportunity to spend time with the work and consider the concepts that inform the work,” Bruso said. “The response to Falling City has been gratifying, the audience at Curious Matter is thoughtful and ready to engage with new ideas.”
Falling City continues until Aug. 28 at Curious Matter, 272 Fifth St, in downtown Jersey City. For more information, including their hours, call (201) 659-5771.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.