Photo Credit: Red Vines, Miska Draskoczy

Gowanus Wild by Miska Draskoczy

This exhibition aims to turn concepts of nature photography on their head by finding the beautiful in what most consider a man-made environmental catastrophe.

From the artist:

My vision for Gowanus Wild is to illustrate a personal exploration of nature and wilderness in the paradoxical setting of a contaminated industrial environment. As the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn has been declared a federal Superfund cleanup site and seen over 150 years of continuous industrial use, one of my aims with the series is to show just how tenacious nature can be in the face of such grave environmental destruction. Set entirely at night when the area empties of people and activity, the mood is one of stillness, reflection, and discovery.

I’ve lived on the border of Gowanus and Park Slope since 2008, and walking home through the deserted streets, I was always struck by how odd and atmospheric the place felt. At first I photographed the area because it inspired interesting images. Later I started to ask myself more consciously what it was that drew me to it. While an indictment of man’s abuse of the environment is perhaps inevitable, my goal is to not just celebrate nature’s resilience but to also show how it is paralleled by the human ability to seek and find the balm of nature in the most unlikely of places. I believe wilderness and adventure are natural longings and that satisfying these urges is perhaps less about far flung travel and more about altering our perception and awakening to our Newsurroundings, however ugly or distraught they may be.

Gowanus Wild is coming to the Brooklyn Public Library for the summer from June 11th to September 25th:

Join for the opening reception on Thursday June 11th, 6pm-8pm in the Ingersoll Young Adult Reading Room, 1st floor, Central Library in Grand Army Plaza.

Several other shows are also opening at the library including artists Stephen Mallon, Leah Oates and Leonard Ursachi, and a show on fairy tales curated by Donna Miskend. If you can’t make the opening, stop by the library sometime over summer, the show will be up through September 25th. Hope you get to check it out!

Gowanus Wild is an urban wilderness series which aims to turn concepts of nature photography on their head by finding the beautiful in what most consider to be a man-made environmental catastrophe: the Gowanus Canal and surrounding neighborhood.

For more information, please visit: http://www.bklynlibrary.org/events/exhibitions/gowanus-wild-miska-drasko

If you would like to read more, we wrote about Gowanus Wild last year: https://newyork.thecityatlas.org/lifestyle/the-wilderness-of-the-gowanus-canal/