Project Description

Portrait of the Artist as a New Yorker is a project that aims to photograph as close to every working artist in New York City as possible within a year. The first phase of the project takes the form of a work-in-progress website (http://portraitoftheartistasanewyorker.com). The second phase takes the form of an installation of the portraits. The ultimate goal will be to include them in a multi-volume book that tells the story of the artistic community in NYC during 2011-2012 through portraits of the people present and an example of their work. Tucked away in a repository such as an archive or library, it will serve as a historical document for future generations of artists and historians, contextualizing the present era, and show that the vibrant art community consisted of more than the handful of artists that tend to be singled out as representative of a given era.

Experiencing the work will depend on what phase the viewer is interacting with. In the web-based Phase 1, the viewer will view the artist and their art in an artificially ‘naive’ fashion because the identities of the artists have been omitted temporarily. During Phase 2, the portraits will be experienced as an immense and comprehensive installation capturing the sheer number and variety of artists present in New York City. Finally, Phase 3 will be a private experience between viewer and historical document. The more time that passes between the production of the multi-volume book will add greater significance to the completed work.