After
the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act mandated an end to discriminatory
immigration policies that favored white Western Europeans, the phrase “Give us
your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses” began to take on new meaning.
A
local exhibit, Crossing the BLVD:
strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, presents a kaleidoscopic INA
update (of sorts) through a collection of photographs, stories, and sound. It’s
on display at the Visual Studies Workshop, a site long committed to expanding
the potential of the media arts and their impact on visual culture.
Artists
Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan visually and orally documented these new immigrants
and refugees living in Queens, New York — “the most ethnically diverse
locality in the United States.” Queens is a modern-day Ellis Island. Different
cultures regularly overlap, crossing a variety of borders — whether actual,
cultural, or just the border of one neighborhood into the next — and 138
different languages are spoken there.
For
Lehrer and Sloan, Queens is also their home borough. For three years, they
“traveled the world” by walking the familiar streets, capturing the stories and
photos of people they met along the way. Crossing
the BLVD is thus a record of these lives, many of them unseen, unnoticed,
and literally undocumented elsewhere.
The
photographs, however, are not images of the poor, hungry, and huddled. Rather,
each represents a glimpse into the lives of the sitter, a little “slice of
life,” such as it is, at a time when immigration patterns are re-shaping, if
not actually redefining, what exactly is “American” in American culture. Seen
together, this series of portraits is a celebration of the resiliency of the
human spirit.
Accompanying
the portraits are panels of narrative text and contextual information, maps of
the country or countries of origin overlaid with maps of Queens neighborhoods,
landscape views of text-specific sites in Queens, important objects and/or
images the individual brought along from home to home, and sound stations with
audio compositions by Lehrer and Sloan, and music by Scott Johnson and others.
(While interesting and certainly useful, the physical arrangement on the walls
was busy if not, at times, confusing. Also, the day we visited several of the
sound stations either were not working at all or stopped in mid-play.)
Take,
for example, Remi Ortiz. Originally from Nigeria, she now presides as
prophetess over a Pentacostal congregation of Ibos, Hausas, and Yoruba in a
low-income neighborhood in Far Rockaway. Although each tribe is technically
from the modern nation-state of Nigeria, it is a socio-political combination
that would be unlikely — at best — back home in Nigeria. Reflecting
canniness of character, each week she wears the dress of a different tribe.
And
then there is Harjinder Singh, a Sikh cab driver, politician, and entrepreneur.
He is photographed straight-on. We stare at him, he looks back at us. The
narrative text that accompanies his portrait explains just why it is that
America is supposed to be the great bosom that beckons. Soon after arriving in
New York, someone tried to rob him in his cab. But it was early in the day and
Mr. Singh only had $13. So, the would-be robber not only gave him back the $13 but also reached into his
own pocket and gave the cabby another $1, saying, “This is to buy your coffee.”
For Mr. Singh, even our criminals are good. He feels we live in “the most
incredible country in the whole world.”
To
single out these two participant-denizens is not to prioritize their stories
other any of the others, but just as their portraits allow us to consider, if
only briefly, the lives of each of these individuals, then, hopefully, all of
the life stories will earn a place in the pantheon that is our collective
culture.
You should go if you’re interested in people’s stories, if
you’re curious about the changing definition of “American.”
Crossing
the Boulevard through June 12 | Visual
Studies Workshop, 31 Prince Street | Hours:
Wednesday through Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m. 442-8676, www.vsw.org
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2005.
