Skip to content
Home/ Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present
Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present

Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present

No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780262014823 The MIT Press

How New York artists have made use of the city's run-down lofts, neglected piers, vacant lots, and deserted streets.

When the real estate bust of the 1970s hit New York City, artists found their own mixed uses for the city's run-down lofts, abandoned piers, vacant lots, and deserted streets, and photographers and filmmakers documented their work. Gordon Matta-Clark turned a sanitation pier into the celebrated work Day's End, and Betsy Sussler filmed its making; Harry Shunk made a photographic series from Willoughby Sharp's Projects: Pier 18 (which included work by Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and William Wegman, among others); Cindy Sherman staged some of her Untitled Film Stills on the same city streets. Mixed Use, Manhattan documents and illustrates the most significant of these projects as well as more recent works by artists who continue to engage with the city's public, underground, and improvised spaces. The book (which accompanies a major exhibition) focuses on several important photographic series: Peter Hujar's 1976 nighttime photographs of Manhattan's West Side; Alvin Baltrop's Hudson River pier photographs from 1975-1985, most of which have never before been shown or published; David Wojnarowicz's Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979), the first of Wojnarowicz's works to be published; and several of Zoe Leonard's photographic projects from the late 1990s on. The book includes 70 color and 130 black-and-white images; a special section on visual documentation of performances and related activities, arranged by artist Louise Lawler; Glenn Ligon's text piece, Housing in New York: A Brief History, 1960-2007 (2007); "Losing the Form in Darkness," an autobiographical story by David Wojnarowicz; and essays by prominent art historians.

About the author

Product details

BrandThe MIT Press
Pub dateOct 29, 2010
ISBN-100262014823
ISBN-139780262014823
Hardcover303.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions10.81 × 1.2 × 9.25 in
Weight4 lb
Last updated 2026-05-06 16:20
$38.39 $54.95 30% off
You save $16.56 · list price $54.95
In stock soon — order now to reserve your copy
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - Group Shows
See all
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
<b>Artists and writers go beyond disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to address the fight for environmental justice, uniting the Asia-Pacific vantage point with international discourse.</b> <p/>Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, <i>Climates. Habitats. Environments.</i> weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking. <p/>Experimental in form as well as in method, <i>Climates. Habitats. Environments.</i> features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i> to discuss human-plant interpenetration&#x3b; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes--and is consumed--in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine&#x3b; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes "Water Sense" as a geontological approach to "the question of our connected and differentiated existence," informed by the "ancestral catastrophe of colonialism." Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry&#x3b; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore "The Posthuman City"&#x3b; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. <p/>Copublished with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
$41.88