Like countless other post-industrial cities suffering from ongoing decline –
such as Detroit, Michigan,
and Oakland, California
– Rochester has a bit of an
identity crisis. Meaning, the city is limping along economically, with
seemingly very little vision for our current state, let alone our future, while
our humiliating mountain of failed projects keeps rising (see: Fast Ferry,
Renaissance Square, developing Midtown, etc.). Segregation along race and
poverty lines is as sharply defined as the Inner Loop’s boundaries, and a
slowing of the mass exodus, so-called the “brain drain,” is nowhere
in sight. “Transitions-Rochester,” a collaborative exhibit and series
of events held at three local cultural institutions, explores how our city is dealing
with its transitional period, and seeks to open up discussion about what future
Rochester might be shifting toward.
It remains to be seen if we will pull together to improve the quality of life
for all Rochester residents,
revitalize the city center, and invent a future for ourselves.

“Rochester’s days as a
company town are over, and urban sprawl and ineffective city planning have left
it a disabled core surrounded by middle-class wealth,” begins the provided
statement from participating venue Visual Studies Workshop regarding the
exhibit. “Transitions-Rochester” is collaborative in a few ways:
between local and international artists, between arts institutions in the area,
and possibly, between visionaries and movers and shakers inspired to effect
some real and substantial change in this place.

The project, initiated by Dutch photographers Theo Baart and Cary Markerink,
and Rochester-based curators Rick Hock of Visual Studies Workshop and Alison
Nordstrom of George Eastman House, also includes support from Visual Studies
Workshop, FOTODOK of The Netherlands, Rochester Contemporary Art Center,
Eastman House, photographer Andrea Stultiens of the Netherlands, as well as the
Rochester-based photographers Gregory Halpern and Oscar Palacio, sound artist
Jason Bernagozzi, and graffiti mural artists the FUA Krew. The exhibitions
kicked off August 5 and some aspects of the project continue through November
13. Much of the exhibition explores the role of Kodak and popular photography
in the shaping of Rochester’s
self-image, and asks the question of how Rochester
will choose to cope in the aftermath of Kodak’s legacy.

The seeds for “Transitions-Rochester” were
planted with a 2009 George Eastman House exhibition in collaboration a Dutch
museum, says George Eastman House curator Alison Nordstrom. This exhibit,
entitled “Nature as Artifice,” was a show of contemporary Dutch
landscape photographs by more than a dozen Dutch photographers based on the
premise that there is no natural land left in Holland
– because of a dearth of space, everything has been developed.

“Several of the photographers came here for the show, because it had a
lot of site-specific installations in it,” says Nordstrom. “Two of
them – Cary Markerink and Theo Baart – fell in love with Rochester.
They’d never seen anything like it. And it was so interesting walking around Rochester
with them and listening to what caught their eye. What they loved was all those
abandoned industrial buildings that we have, because in Holland,
since there’s no room, the moment a factory closes, the building gets
repurposed for something else.”

As Nordstrรถm spoke, I was struck with self-consciousness: what would such an
efficient culture think of our baffling apathy over use of land, space, and
ready-to-reuse structures?

Markerink and Baart also saw many similarities between Holland
and our city, and as photographers who both work with urban planners, “one
of their questions was: what is the best response, in a city that has been
based on manufacturing, when the factories go away? And I think they were
particularly interested in the fact that what we used to manufacture here was
photographic,” says Nordstrom.

With support from the Dutch government, Markerink and Baart initiated this
project, which would be a study of Rochester
from a foreign perspective, with the idea that eventually the artists will do a
similar study in a former manufacturing city in Holland.
The project grew to include work by a third Dutch photographer, Andrea
Stultiens, as well as a number of Rochester-based artists, together adding to
the story of what Rochester has been, what it is, and what it might yet become.

The first exhibit to open in the
“Transitions-Rochester” project was Rochester Contemporary Art
Center’s “State of the City 2011: In the Loop,” which was on display
August 5 through September 25. The show focused in particular on the
cumbersome, divisive Inner Loop, with beautiful paintings of the Loop and its
surrounding areas by Jim Mott; photos that omitted the roadway from the
landscape as well as an interactive re-envisioning of the space it occupies by
Cary Markerink; layered graphics and information telling the history of our
Loop and others presented by The Landmark Society of Western New York (in
collaboration with designers and artists Eric Bridle, Lisa Feinstein, and
Mattรฉ); a video, photo, and drawing installation by Rochester experimental
artists Bartow+Metzgar with James Downer and Greg Stewart; and Ithaca artist
Mark Edward Grimm’s surreal surveillance-installation dealing with police
activity and interaction over radio in and around the Inner Loop.

The exhibit at Visual Studies Workshop is accompanied by six books produced
for this project, each including images and essays from each of the individual
projects, packaged in a slim, Kodak-esque gold folio. An abbreviated version of
most of these artists’ works is also found at George Eastman House through
November 6.

“‘Transitions’ was conceived as a way for artists to be included in
discussions about the future of Rochester, says Visual Studies Workshop
Director Tate Shaw. “We recognize that new artist support models no longer
give time and money directly to artists expecting they will simply create
culture independently. Now artists and designers are at the center of larger,
community-wide efforts of city planning, economic and community development,
and this is where VSW is taking its artist-support programs. I see
‘Transitions’ as a model for future interdisciplinary efforts supporting communities
here in the city.”

At VSW, Cary Markerink’s “Inner Loop” includes images of people
and downtown scenes, bits of debris, in color atop black and white scenes, and
is complemented by an essay about his first morning in Rochester. The artist
contemplates the Berlin Wall fragment on display in the Bausch & Lomb
headquarters, entitled “Every Wall Falls Eventually,” and wonders if
a dismantled piece of the Inner Loop might one day join this mini exhibit,
which he feels should be titled, “All Infrastructure Eventually Becomes
Obsolete.”

The 2.68-mile ring-road that “physically and mentally” divides
downtown from the rest of the city has a presence “like a scar,” says
Markerink in his essay. The loop dead-ends streets like a “local variation
of the Berlin Wall,” he says, and simultaneously speaks volumes about our
lack of integration skills with our structures as well as with our people.

Theo Baart’s “Sound Horn” is full of images of an abandoned
downtown with loads of empty lots, derelict buildings, and includes three of 20
total essays from individuals from various Rochester communities. One story
features a former Kodak employee who, when laid off after nearly 25 years of
employment, found himself working the same job at the same desk, the only
difference being the new signature on his paycheck from the contracting company
who hired him. Baart’s work is a prelude to a larger publication about cities
and regions that, “hit hard by the departure of the manufacturing
industry, are looking for new sources of income,” per the artist’s
statement.

By contrast, RIT professor Gregory Halpern’s images could have been be taken
anywhere. Where they show the broken-down detritus of the city, it’s done
mostly in minute detail – an eerily glowing shard of broken glass in the dark
dirt, or a bit of plastic garbage left behind in a concrete corner. His images
of people are lovely portraits: a child slightly turned away in the shadows, a
man holding the camera’s gaze and standing amid seemingly lush plant life. An
immense tree with truncated limbs stands in an atmospheric field with the glow
from nearby houselights, its unproductive remaining mass perhaps a subtle
metaphor.

“I am personally drawn to Gregory Halpern’s darkly poetic vision of
Rochester and cities like it as imagined gardens of Eden that have cast us
out,” says VSW Director Tate Shaw. “The point is to show that
Rochester is not a paradise, but a place worth rethinking.”

Eastman House allotted the gallery space nearest its
University Avenue entrance for its survey show of around 50 images from the
individual photographic explorations of Rochester by Andrea Stultiens, Oscar
Palacio, and Gregory Halpern, and the collaborative photos by Cary Markerink
and Theo Baart. Many of the images are included in the Visual Studies Workshop
exhibit as well.

Markerink and Baart worked independently but also collaborated under the
title “Works on Paper,” says Nordstrom. This is a project about
parking lots, “which seemed so Rochester to Cary and Theo, because it’s
not nearly as common to have a car in Holland as in the United States. Everyone
rides bicycles and takes public transportation, and if there are parking lots,
they tend to be multi-storied because there’s no room.”

“The number of parking lots in Rochester really surprised them, and
that’s what they focused on,” says Nordstrom. “You can just see their
kind of wonder – here’s all this space where you could build 30 apartment
buildings, but we haven’t.” Perhaps it takes an outsider to properly
discern the true waste of what is to many of us visual white noise. Picture
after picture reveals a fascinated look at blacktop crisscrossed with
parking-space quadrants and repaired tar, contrasted with amazing expanses of
bright blue sky – available to the eye due to the uninterrupted flat spans of
land – with towering, fluffy clouds.

The usage of space is also one of the foci of Colombian-born,
Rochester-based Oscar Palacio, who also teaches at RIT. His project, “The
Great Yellow Father” – a nickname for Kodak by employees – so-named for
Kodak’s bearing on this town, includes aerial shots of quadrants of Kodak Park
taken in 2005 (shown in color) and again in 2009 (displayed in black and
white). Where change is evident, it shows not development, but decline. Some
areas where buildings once stood are now empty lots, and where parking lots
were once filled to the brim with employees’ vehicles, far fewer cars are
parked there today.

Palacio is also “particularly interested in the idea of
paternalism” says Nordstrom. Any company town has some element of the
paternal, she says, “but because [Palacio] comes from a Latin-American
culture, which is much more strongly paternalistic than ours, he was
particularly interested in the way Kodak advertized its products in South
America.” Given access to the Eastman House Legacy Collection, which holds
all of the advertizing Kodak ever did, Palacio researched ads generated by
Kodak for the South American market, with an interest in imagery that dealt
with the role of the father. As a result, part of Palacio’s exhibit includes
idyllic vintage photos of fathers photographing their families, or men
photographic women, used in adverts for Colombia’s “Cromos” magazine
in the 1920’s.

“This project explores the death of the ‘father’ and its urban
implications for the city of Rochester,” per the artists’ statement for
his works at VSW and Eastman House. “The Kodak Corporation, colloquially
known by employees as ‘The Great Yellow Father’ and ‘Daddy Kodak,’ has visibly
declined.”

Also hailing from Holland, photographer Andrea Stultiens
sought to connect with people in Rochester by interviewing and photographing
retired Kodak workers, photographing people at Ontario Beach Park and
Seabreeze, and photographing people photographing others at those locations,
emphasizing what an effectively democratized pastime photography remains.

Stultiens’ VSW installation, “Reasons to Smile,” includes these
images as well as Rochester and Kodak ephemera in the form of booklets of
images pinned to the wall. “Hope” is a booklet of the highest-rated
photos of Mt. Hope Cemetery on image-hosting website Flickr. Images include
dogs playing in leaves and flowers, glowing twilight, and lovely architecture.
Another, entitled “For Sale,” holds photographs of Kodak items,
including old cameras, film, and other paraphernalia, taken by Andrew Ghend,
for eBay sales. “A Good Night” is full of photographs by Allen Keppen
(of ihadagoodnight.com) of young people
out drinking being…young people out drinking.

Also at Visual Studies, “Inner Workings,” a collaboration between
VSW grad students Julia Muniz, Jason Bernagozzi, and Dan Varenka, as well as
Rochester’s premier graffiti writers, FUA Krew, examines Rochester’s
relationship, or lack thereof, with the north side of the city. The Puerto
Rican and African-American communities who live and work on and around North
Clinton Avenue need a “change in consciousness and a sense of
ownership,” says Muniz. The installation and accompanying book include
interviews with and portraits of residents, images of of FUA Krew at work on
their striking murals, at the annual BBOY BBQ, and in the abandoned subway.

In a room opposite the main Siskind Gallery space at VSW, Jason Bernagozzi’s
“The City is Breathing” is a sound sculpture made of a chain of
speakers that play noises recorded under the streets in steam vaults, sewers,
drainage systems, and abandoned subway tunnels. The work explores the body
system of the city that is “powered, fueled, and even destroyed by the
beings that shape and inhabit its borders,” per the provided statement.
The artist compares electrical lines to a nervous system, and water pipes to
veins. The recorded and played-back cacophony is a symphony of hisses, muffled
voices, sounds like glass shattering and repetitive clanks, revealing an eerie,
mysterious underworld that leaves the viewer considering the city as a living
organism, worthy of attention and care.

FUA Krew’s spray-paint installation is a freestyle image by group members
Oz, Cruk, and Efie that takes up the entire center wall structure of the VSW’s
Siskind Gallery, depicting on one side a bygone era of happy shoppers in
Midtown Plaza. The flip side of the wall is a dystopian version of the same
scene, complete with a wrecking ball, a man holding a gun, and a
derelict-looking group of people. Nordstrom felt that it was crucial to include
art by FUA Krew in this endeavor. They’re “probably the most important
artists in Rochester,” she says, “they’re so widely recognized in
Europe and Asia,” but not as much here.

In a side space, Dan Varenka’s video “After the Riots” includes a
bit of a history lesson, told at ground level through newspaper headlines,
images, and voiceover by 7th Ward residents and community-housing activists,
about the discrimination leading up to the 1964 race riots, the aftermath, how
none of the promises made to Rochester’s poorest residents have been kept, and
how relations between the police and African Americans aren’t much better now.
“People that didn’t grow up in Rochester, in the city, don’t have the same
concerns” as outsiders who commute for work, says Range of FUA Krew.

It’s easy to share the same city and the same dilemmas as
the people in Rochester, says Nordstrom, but to only really get to know the
people who are exactly like you. But exhibitions such as
“Transitions-Rochester” have the potential to bring people together
over crucial issues, she says. “Cultural institutions can start the
conversations – for one thing, it makes us a place to have the conversation,
and you can’t have too many of those.”

“I think the exhibit and publications address the need for more shared
public experiences in Rochester,” says VSW’s Shaw. “When you look at
the bleak landscape around the Kodak Park-area bus stop photographed by Oscar
Palacio, or the dark and divisive chain-linked borders of the Inner Loop and
the empty lots as pictured by Cary Markerink and Theo Baart respectively, the
environment is showing us that our use of space needs reconsidering.”

“Pending funding, it is our hope that the American photographers who
have been part of this project will go to Holland and will work in one of the
cities that used to manufacture electronic equipment […] and compare how that
country and that culture is dealing with [living] in a formerly industrial
community,” says Nordstrom. “We are certainly not alone in facing
these challenges.”

Visual Studies Workshop will hold an open-house event on Thursday, October
13, 6-10 p.m. at 31
Prince Street, at which you can view the exhibit,
witness a live painting demo by FUA Krew, and provide your own commentary in
the custom gallery video booth. Displays from the Workshop’s visual resources
will be exhibited throughout the space, and myriad images from VSW’s vast collections
of lantern slides, news story and street photography, rare albums and books,
will be available for viewing. Screenings and live events in the auditorium
will also take place throughout the evening. For more information check the
“Transitions-Rochester” blog at transitionsrochester.wordpress.com.

“Transitions-Rochester”

Through November 13

Visual Studies Workshop, Siskind Gallery, 31 Prince
St.

Thursday 5-8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday
noon-5 p.m. | Free

442-8676, vsw.org, transitionsrochester.wordpress.com

Through November 6

George Eastman House, 900 East Ave.

Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.,
Thursday until 8 p.m., Sun 1-5 p.m. | $5-$12

271-3361, eastmanhouse.org

This article appears in Oct 11-11, 2011.