Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood is a rapidly gentrifying Superfund site, where the ecological disruption of over 150 years of industry endures alongside new condos and commercial spaces. Yet animals and plants, both natural and invasive, live amid the decay and revitalization. Beginning in 2012, local photographer Miska Draskoczy explored Gowanus’s streets and toxic canal by night, capturing the “wilderness” of this urban environment.
Cover of Gowanus Wild (courtesy Unnatural Kingdom)
“My working definition was any element of organic material or weather phenomenon that interacted with the built landscape, whether it’s a plant hanging on a cinderblock wall, footprints in ice, or more traditional forms, like the canal as a body of water or shots of wildlife,” Draskoczy told Hyperallergic. “I thought less about the series being strictly documentarian and more as a metaphoric longing for the wild. Like how even a small bit of overgrown weeds or a patch of crumbling masonry is still an expression of wild forces unchecked by human control, and can provide an avenue for us to experience that connection to wilderness.”
Over 50 of Draskoczy’s photographs are featured in Gowanus Wild, recently released by Unnatural Kingdom in conjunction with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. The monograph follows a 2014 exhibition of the images at Ground Floor Gallery and a 2015 installation at the Brooklyn Public Library. In these recent years, the EPA began a cleanup of the canal (that reportedly can’t be halted by the Trump administration), while artists have faced eviction from longtime studios. The residential and commercial stories of the Gowanus continue to overlap with its distant past as a pre-colonial salty marsh on the edge of the harbor.
Pages from Gowanus Wild (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)
Pages from Gowanus Wild (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)
“These photographs capture a distinct moment in the evolution of the Gowanus watershed, one that is dramatically different from how it was one hundred years ago, even more different from four hundred years ago, and I expect quite different from what we will see in another fifty years,” writes Andrea Parker, executive director of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, in a book essay.
In one image, a snowy egret perches by the quiet canal, while a sunflower blooms above strewn coffee cups and a discarded plastic barrier. Branches of a tree crawl through a chain-link fence, and, in another shot, red vines creep over graffiti on a white wall. Some of these saturated scenes are accompanied by Draskoczy’s poems, with the first setting the tone: “Night sets and the green canal smooths out / a soft promise in umber tones and emerald glass. / The city holds its breath, the tides of commerce recede.” The streets in the photographs are deserted, and sometimes an eerie mist hovers over the waterway, which is polluted with overflow sewage and chemicals from 19th- and early 20th-century gas plants and tanneries.
“It’s taken on an almost mythic quality,” Draskoczy said. “I wanted to touch on that sense of adventure, of exploring places you’re supposed to avoid, while also illustrating the paradox of Gowanus still remaining very much alive in spite of all the environmental destruction.”
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Miska Draskoczy, photograph from Gowanus Wild (courtesy the artist)
Gowanus Wild by Miska Draskoczy is out now from Unnatural Kingdom.
The Latest
Bobby Wilson Combats Indigenous Stereotypes Through Humor
The artist-performer’s career undulates, ever so gracefully, across multiple mediums and registers of generational pain, healing laughter, and Indigenous joy.
Rare 19th-Century Silhouette Album’s Secrets Unlocked
Traveling portrait artist William Bache’s album depicts famous figures like Thomas Jefferson as well as people whose identity was previously unknown.
Nevada Museum of Art Presents Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity
For the first time in nearly 60 years, the innovative yet under-recognized artist is the subject of a retrospective exhibition. On view in Reno, Nevada.
Artists Show What They Can Do With a Google Phone’s Camera
Works by 20 photographers are now on view in Manhattan for the seventh season and 100th project coming out of the Google Creator Labs.
Met Museum Kicked Me Out for Praying to My Ancestral Gods
My danced prayer to looted Cambodian antiquities was too much for the New York museum.
The Public Theater in NYC Presents Plays for the Plague Year
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’s theatrical concert chronicles the 2020 lockdown and the hope and perseverance that emerged from it.
A Museum Guard’s Ode to the Healing Power of Art
In All the Beauty in the World, Patrick Bringley revisits the many ways that art meets life, and life art, and how death is often the bridge between them.
UK Extends Export Ban on Coveted “Portrait of Omai”
London’s National Portrait Gallery was given a few months to acquire the work, which depicts the first Polynesian visitor to the UK.
Mondays at Pratt Institute: Weekly Openings of Work by Graduating Artists
Free and open to the public, Pratt Shows celebrate the school’s graduating students. MFA and BFA work on view this spring in Brooklyn, New York.
The Sculptor Making Art With Loved Ones’ Ashes
Inspired by the three-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, Julian Stair’s exhibition honors the lives of eight people with cinerary jars.
Art Institute of Chicago Under Scrutiny Over Sacred Nepali Necklace
The 17th-century object remains on display at the Chicago museum despite Nepal’s calls for repatriation.
LSU School of Art Grants Highest MFA Stipends in the Southern US
With funded assistantships, full tuition waivers, and generous stipends, Louisiana State University helps students lay the groundwork for a successful lifelong art practice.
Art Problems: How Do I Get a Public Art Commission?
Want to leave a mark on your city or town, but don’t know where to start? Paddy Johnson has some tips.
Rose B. Simpson Embeds Ancestral Histories in Clay
She has taken clay and used it to recall its ancestral roots in Pueblo culture and address the present history of postcolonial recovery and ongoing trauma.