Photo: ©Camilo Ramirez, The Gulf.
The fifth edition of The Fence returns, bigger than ever before with a five-city campaign that beautifully weaves photography into the landscape in one of the finest contemporary displays of public art. Produced by United Photo Industries (UPI), The Fence is on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park (through September 20, 2016), with local editions in Boston (through September 27, 2016), Santa Fe Railyard Art Park & Atlanta (August–October 2016), and Houston (November 2016–January 2017.
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Originally conceived in the winter of 2011 as Sam Barzillay, UPI Creative Director, walked through Brooklyn Bridge Park while it was under extensive renovation, as were Piers 1 and 6, further along the waterfront. A long “greenway” connected these sections, allowing for the safe flow of pedestrian and bicycle traffic without interference from the immediate, expansive, and long-term projects that lay on the other side of the construction fence.
©Michael Hanson, Dominican Baseball.
Barzilay began to imagine the possibilities. He recalls, “The combination of a large and ‘captive’ audience (the greenway acting as a long and scenic corridor) and the presence of so many fence surfaces made us see the huge potential of presenting powerful photographic narratives in a large format public setting, rather than more traditional advertising displays one would find outdoors.”
The idea was embraced to tremendous effect, with UPI building its roster of locations year after year, creating an entirely new way of relating to photography in the public realm. Barzilay observes, “We think about photography for advertising but not for public art. We’re not selling anything. We’re asking you to think—possibly. You don’t have to buy anything. You can just enjoy this on your run. We’ve put up The Fence in parks and on bike paths. People get used to it. When it comes down, we get emails asking where it went.”
“The Fence” at Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Indeed, The Fence is one of the best ways to experience photography free of all constraints: no gallery or museum walls, no book pages to turn, just a long, luscious stretch of vinyl mesh running along the street. The work of forty photographers is selected from a jury (this year’s totaled 55) of photography professionals who never tire of looking at images. The work is organized into six categories including Streets, Home, People, Play, Creatures, and Nature, drawing work from around the globe.
Perhaps the perfect illustration would be Anna Filipova’s Research at the End of the World, taken at the 79th parallel on the Svalbard archipelago, home to Ny-Ålesund, the largest modern Arctic research laboratory in existence. Here we see a new landscape being born, one that is required to accommodate human intervention in whatever form is required. A brave new world, if ever there was.
©Anna Filipova, Research at the End of the World
The beauty of photography is how it brings it all home to you, then remixes it into a curious cocktail, offering a fresh perspective and contrasting points of view to heighten our perception and awareness. From Monique Jaques’s Protecting Our Land: Virunga’s First Female Rangers to Rodrigo Abd’s Peru’s Illegal Gold Mining: Ravaging the Rainforest, The Fence invites us to see the world anew, while experiencing the unspoken words that a picture offers all who look.
“We’re changing the environment by integrating into it,” Barzilay observes, mentioning the partnership with the DUMBO Business Improvement District to recycle the materials used in Personal Mythologies, a UPI installation on the construction fences around the Manhattan Bridge. The program employs homeless people in a workshop in a church to transform the vinyl mesh into tote bags, which will then be donated to members of the community. “This is a total second life we hadn’t planned for or expected,” Barzilay reveals.
©Santi Palacios, Coming Ashore
The Fence will be on view for the run up to UPI’s Photoville, which returns to Brooklyn Bridge Park, September 21-25, 2016. As part of the programming, the Jury’s Choice winner will receive a cash prize of $5,000 to support their work, a Leica T camera package, and a solo exhibition at Photoville 2016. Nice work if you can get it, as the song goes.
Taken as a whole, The Fence brings it all right home to you, whether we’re talking The Black Panthers or Black Diamonds, Township Ballet or Entertainment in Kabul. It’s nothing you’ve expected but it’s everything you’ve wanted from public art.
©Rodrigo Abd, Peru’s Illegal Gold Mining
All photos: Courtesy of United Photo Industries.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
