November 17 – December 15, 2007

I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city, Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient…
- Walt Whitman, excerpt from Mannahatta

In Susan Wides’ new series, Mannahatta, she offers a view of New York that is at once both recognizable and disorienting. With rare permission to shoot from roofs of new skyscrapers where most of us can never go, Wides allows us to see the city almost as a physical entity of complicated tensions. While certain photographs intentionally evoke earlier artists who depicted modern city culture, we also experience a New York of heightened color and distortions of space, scale and light. The city appears before us, dissolving into shapes of light and energy, presenting an uncanny perspective.

Mannahatta originated from a photo-shoot commissioned by New York magazine. In this special issue, Wides’ unfamiliar ways of capturing familiar sites were recognized as one the reasons to love New York right now.

“…Her photographs are fluid rather than static; Her lens swings, tilts and pans, giving the images a dynamism that they share with the city they capture, itself an ongoing act of imagination.”
- Christopher Bonanos, excerpt from New York magazine, Jan 2006

Wides’ Mobile Views project, begun in 1997, employs the manipulation of the 4x5 camera to reimagine the cultural and social landscape. Mannahatta continues this project as Wides explores the current building boom, the largest in the history of New York City. Wides brings fresh insight to a fascinating time in the city.

The photographs of Susan Wides have been featured in numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. Her work is in the permanent collection of the International Center of Photography, The Brooklyn Museum, The Art Museum of Princeton University, Bibliotheque Nationale, The Center for Creative Photography and Norton Museum of Art. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies One Man’s Eye and Here is New York. She has contributed to several magazines, including Harpers, Double Take, Architecture and 2wice.

For further information, please contact the gallery.