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Director Hannah Fidell Talks ‘A Teacher’
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, half the dramatic competition finalists were brought to life by women. It’s about time, boys. One such feature was written and directed by precocious, feminist filmmaker Hannah Fidell. Her film, A Teacher, delves into the emotional hills and valleys a female teacher experiences while having an affair with her student, reversing all those American Beauty tropes we know so well. We sat down with Fidell — and the film’s star, Lindsay Burdge — to talk about turning the tides on the omnipotent male gaze.
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![The Last Book I Loved: ‘The Unnamed’
The Last Book I Loved is an ongoing series with The Rumpus to highlight emerging Tumblr writers (and the books they love). Want to have your essay considered? Submit it here.
When you go to the website for Joshua Ferris’s 2010 novel, The Unnamed, your screen fills with static for a second. Then it resolves into a grainy gray video of the main hall of Grand Central Terminal, like security camera footage, commuters walking to and from their trains. And then fuzzy blue circles appear over a handful of heads. When you click on one, the video pauses, and a small text bubble comes up. One says, “I look around, I wonder if I’m just sick.” Another quotes a poem by Percy Shelley. “Art thou pale for weariness / Of climbing heaven and gazing on earth/Wandering companionless / Among the stars that have a different birth.” They feel like a little of what each person has inside them, a bit of story or sorrow they keep inside themselves.
This is what Joshua Ferris’s work is — a song of this secret world. He writes about the isolation of modern life, our disconnect from the world at large and from the people around us. And he writes of the small, beautiful hopes of connection — through love, through hope, through body-breaking exertions.
[[MORE]]
The Unnamed is about a man named Tim who cannot stop walking. Tim comes home to Connecticut one night from his job at a high-powered New York law firm and tells his wife, simply, “It’s back.” She bundles him in winter gear, packs a bag with provisions and a GPS. She finally falls asleep in the middle of the night and wakes up to find Tim gone, walked out of the house to who knows where. In the grips of this condition he is driven to walk, for hours on end, stopping only when he collapses, exhausted. No one knows why. No one has a cure.
Is it a metaphor? Maybe. Is it a conceit? Sure. But it’s a starting place. Every story has to start somewhere, and Tim’s starts with “It’s back.” For the first dozen or so pages, you don’t even know what “it” is, and the suspense builds like really good sci-fi: something is wrong, and you don’t know what. Ferris takes this conceit and builds a full, rich story about it. All of the rules — as in the best sci-fi — hold tight. All of the repercussions feel deep and true to the human heart.
Tim has a wife, Jane, and they have a daughter named Becka. Tim’s condition ravages his life, but their lives are intertwined, and so it ravages them all. Becka reads her father stories while he’s handcuffed to the bed. Jane picks him up from parking lots and police stations and curbsides, and waits for the next call when he’s gone. She worries the call will never come.
Tim is at war with his body; his legs that won’t listen. Walking forces him to shed his attachment to his career, to comfort, to any sense of plan or control. Walking takes him out into the world, first within a radius of a seven or eight hour walk from his office or his home, but then farther afield. He is completely alone. All around him, the world is falling apart.
Tim’s world is a world frighteningly like ours, with superstorms and deep snow. The winters are too cold, the summers are filled with droughts, fires, and floods. A carpet of dead bees covers Madison Square Park. Birds fall out of the sky. The great cracks in the rightness of the world hover in the background of Tim’s life — just as they do in ours. Maybe Tim’s story is set just a couple of years into our future. Maybe that’s what our world is really going to be.
The real reason I loved this book is that this world — Tim’s condition, the ailing planet — is just the backdrop of the heart of Ferris’s story to nestle into.
Little bits of The Unnamed are stuck in my head. A man clinging to a telephone pole in a flood. A daughter and her father on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. A sense of loss. A sense of isolation. A sense of love. For all its desolation, for all its characters’ helplessness, it’s a hopeful book. Because even when they can’t connect, can’t reach each other’s inner world, they try. They valiantly, desperately try.
— Jaime Green](http://24.media.tumblr.com/679563333403fa24080947b49b966176/tumblr_mkeoupnM6M1rrpm57o1_r2_1280.jpg)
The Last Book I Loved: ‘The Unnamed’
The Last Book I Loved is an ongoing series with The Rumpus to highlight emerging Tumblr writers (and the books they love). Want to have your essay considered? Submit it here.
When you go to the website for Joshua Ferris’s 2010 novel, The Unnamed, your screen fills with static for a second. Then it resolves into a grainy gray video of the main hall of Grand Central Terminal, like security camera footage, commuters walking to and from their trains. And then fuzzy blue circles appear over a handful of heads. When you click on one, the video pauses, and a small text bubble comes up. One says, “I look around, I wonder if I’m just sick.” Another quotes a poem by Percy Shelley. “Art thou pale for weariness / Of climbing heaven and gazing on earth/Wandering companionless / Among the stars that have a different birth.” They feel like a little of what each person has inside them, a bit of story or sorrow they keep inside themselves.
This is what Joshua Ferris’s work is — a song of this secret world. He writes about the isolation of modern life, our disconnect from the world at large and from the people around us. And he writes of the small, beautiful hopes of connection — through love, through hope, through body-breaking exertions.
View post 489 notes -
Crashing the Black Box with ‘Charlie Victor Romeo’
It doesn’t get more real than this. Charlie Victor Romeo re-enacts — almost verbatim — transcripts from the “black box” recordings of six plane crashes that occurred from 1989 to 1996. Originally a stage play produced in 1999, CVR has since been performed worldwide in many different venues (it’s even been used for pilot training by the Pentagon). Gripping, harrowing, and poignant, the play has now made the leap to a film that preserves the spare and chilling authenticity of its creative predecessor. And in 3D no less (by way of New York’s 3-Legged Dog Media & Theater Group), which somehow makes the film seem both hyper-present and dreamlike. While at Sundance, we spoke to director Bob Berger and co-director/editor Karlyn Michelson about translating the play to the big screen, the artistic life of a the project, and respecting the borders of reality.
View post 109 notes -
500,000 Refugees, Countless Stories: Welcome to Dadaab
When the idea for a documentary project about the world’s largest refugee camp came about, in early 2011, Dadaab, Kenya was a place that few had heard of. A haven for those fleeing armed conflict, disaster, or persecution, on the border with Somalia, Dadaab was already home to the world’s largest refugee camp — a dubious honor it held by a wide margin. And yet to most, Dadaab simply drew a blank.
All that changed in early 2011, when the looming famine in the Horn of Africa sent refugees flooding into the camp. Soon after, as famine was formally declared in Somalia, international journalists followed. For the first time in years, Dadaab was suddenly in the news: an international symbol for a humanitarian crisis. There were 500,000 refugees in a camp that was built for 90,000.
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![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://25.media.tumblr.com/6fde05564baa4f11aec455a8c715aee1/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o1_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://24.media.tumblr.com/46e9d8eacc056e2d4c56622320eecfa8/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o2_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://25.media.tumblr.com/c9a9f1cfa87f0155f8412c1b2998af1b/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o3_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://25.media.tumblr.com/437c396b6efeada47d2f70a14db52762/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o4_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://24.media.tumblr.com/2fad13951865b833113fa43039353e40/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o5_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://25.media.tumblr.com/8aa9c9c7a69a80a25cdef57e56f03def/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o6_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://25.media.tumblr.com/e0b567d565e2f613428f74b94c6bdee0/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o7_1280.jpg)
![At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former. [[MORE]]
But in his Gowanus Canal photography series, William Miller evades both of these conventions. His photographs offer glimpses of floating clouds, glittering fragments, iridescent surfaces, and delicate whorls. Although he comes from a photojournalism background — he collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in Kosovo and has worked for The New York Post for ten years — these mesmerizing, dreamlike images leave reportage behind. Instead, they offer ambiguity and abstraction, capturing the fleeting, strange beauty of the Gowanus as well as the contradictions embodied in that beauty. We spoke to him about the inspiration behind his work.
What drew you to photograph the Gowanus?
I’m a photojournalist by trade. I’ve been doing that for most of my life, but in the last few years I’ve been interested in more abstract work and a different approach toward subjects, like with my “Ruined Polaroids” project. So when I was looking at the Gowanus Canal, how strange and beautiful it was, I didn’t want to approach it from a photojournalist’s perspective. I didn’t want to tell, necessarily, a story. I was interested in how it could be beautiful and disgusting at the same time, and I was attracted to those contradictions. And when you look down into the garbage and crap, you can see the sun and the sky and the beauty above.
What is your process for the series?
I go out whenever I can, and hope I get lucky. You’re literally running around, trying to get things from a certain perspective, to fall in the frame the way you want them to, to reflect the sky the way you want them to. But a lot of days, maybe ¾ of the days that I go down there, there’s nothing. The water is not cooperating. If there’s something floating, sometimes it’s too far away. Some days it looks perfectly smooth and there’s nothing going on. It isn’t successful every day, and there’s something rewarding about that.
Has living in New York influenced you as an artist?
The city’s scope gives you access to so much. When I started getting interested in fine art, I could go to MoMA and see the things I was reading about in textbooks up close, which is incredible. Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon — when I walked past it I was floored, because I’d been reading so much about it and it was just sitting there. You’re looking at it and you can’t believe it. Not just because the painting is amazing, but also that you can just have access to it like that. It’s pretty exciting, even for a New Yorker.
Where do you find inspiration?
Recently I’ve been really interested in painting, especially abstract expressionism: Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Milton Resnick, and Rothko, obviously. It’s this idea of, when you’re really close to something, it looks remarkably similar to when you’re really far away from something. Like if you think about pictures of the atom and then pictures of planets revolving around the sun. The only difference between those two things is perspective. When you don’t know what you’re looking at, your mind starts to make up its own narrative. I like that shift, or confusion, in perspective.
— Sue Ding](http://24.media.tumblr.com/e2007e3fd5a4f9c9529fb234355a13c1/tumblr_mk8m78GhVx1rrpm57o8_1280.jpg)
At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. This tends to inspire two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former.
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Artist Jay Shells channeled his love of hip hop music and his uncanny sign-making skills towards a brand new project: “Rap Quotes.” For this ongoing project, Shells created official-looking street signs quoting famous rap lyrics that shout out specific street corners and locations.
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