Alice Attie: Harlem On the Verge - Hardcover

3.62

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780971454873: Alice Attie: Harlem On the Verge

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0971454876 ISBN 13: 9780971454873

Publisher: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2003

These magnificent color portraits document both the people and the buildings of Harlem on the eve of great change. Gentrification and the influx of large chain stores are replacing small businesses, store fronts, memorials on walls, and other visual evidence of the complex range of cultural identities that residents had woven into the streets of their neighborhoods. With a sense of both dedication and desperation (to beat the developer's clock) Alice Attie has produced a beautiful record of a world rapidly being lost. 90 color photographs.

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About the Author:

Alice Attie teaches literature at Barnard College.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Though insufficiently edited, Robin D. G. Kelley's introductory essay about these vivid and entrancing color photos radiates intelligent enthusiasm for Attie as a social documentarian who captures Manhattan's black and Latino city-within-a-city when it seems about to be transferred from its traditional, predominantly poor denizens to a bourgeoisie who may be multicultural but aren't and won't be poor. Kelley is very good at pointing out the traces of reconnoitering class imperialism (the scrawled "Derrida" amid other graffiti) and the poignant scrawlings (the moved-to message sprayed over an impromptu elegy) of indigenous retreat. But before or after seeing the photos with Kelley, peruse them for their formal properties, which are bold and masterly. Every composition is oriented upon a cross--a strong central vertical axis and a strong horizontal one above the center of the frame--though a visible crossing of two lines is seldom present; this property unifies the whole suite of photographs, and any symbolic accents it adds are usually pertinent. Illumination is equal throughout the frame, establishing a rock-solid ground on which the figures deploy and refusing to "privilege" any object in the frame. Colors are utterly equally weighed; no reds or yellows or blacks punch out or retreat from the eye. Image after image evokes the response, "Man! That's a beautiful picture." Now look at the people and things Attie shows us. Unforgettable. Ray Olson
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