Down These Mean Streets
Will Steacy
Michael Paris Mazzeo
Softcover
16 pages
279×431 mm
2010
ISBN: Not available
Down These Mean Streets provides us with photographic evidence of America’s abandonment of its inner cities. Prompted by the pervasive fear gripping the country and our preoccupation with homeland security, America has diverted its attention and resources away from those most in need, divesting itself of the basic responsibilities of affordable housing, medical care and essential infrastructure.
Working only at night, Steacy walks alone from the airport to the central business district of each city he explores. With map in hand, he follows a loosely planned route through the barren streets and neighborhoods routinely avoided by all but local inhabitants, while stopping to document his observations and chance encounters on film. Illuminated by the saturated, artificial colors of the urban night and marked by long, patient exposures with his large-format view camera, Steacy’s images seductively draw us into a country of foreclosed homes and vacant lots, broken economies and neglected people. With a combination of carefully composed urban views, subtly precise detail images, and insightful portraits, he allows us the time and space to enter this world and question our role in it.
Will Steacy (b. 1980) is an American photographer and writer. He comes from five generations of newspaper men and worked as a Union Laborer before becoming a photographer.
www.willsteacy.com/notebook/
Michael Paris Mazzeo is an artist, educator, curator, and collaborator who has long traversed the line between art and commerce, having owned and operated a successful photography gallery in New York City, while maintaining an art practice and commercial studio. A photographer by training, specializing in contemporary and antiquarian photographic processes, he recently turned his attention toward performance, video, and installation art, earning an MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from the City College of New York.
