Grant Street Gallery: Zones of Discard

This Friday, September 25th, Viktoria Ciostek opens her photography exhibit, Zones of Discard, at Grant Street Gallery, 216 Grant Street. Ciostek's work documents the area of the West Side she works and lives in (the necklace she wears is a symbol for Sweetness_7 Cafe, where you used to be able to find Viktoria behind the counter on any given day of the week).

Though Ciostek's images point to some of the "discarded" buildings in the neighborhood, Harvey Garrett, executive director of the West Side Community Collaborative will be quick to point out that this is a neighborhood in which the infrastructure is intact, homeowners are invested, and business is beginning to flourish. 

Garrett would say that anyone endeavoring to take over any of these structures would find themselves with good neighbors, in a neighborhood that can be brought back from the brink with some vision and work.

Ciostek's artful images then, depending on how they're viewed, can signal discard or opportunity. We spoke to Ciostek about her art and her motivation.

ECB: What came first - your involvement on the West Side or the photo essay?

VC: Well I grew up on the West Side, so it has always been home to me, but both sort of happened simultaneously.  I moved back to Buffalo in October of 2007 after traveling for a few years overseas and then living in Alaska.  When Prish [Moran of Sweetness_7] told me she bought the building, I immediately wanted to be part of the project and moved into the building in April of 2008.  

I was living alone in the building for 6 months before any of the storefronts were open, and though people said I was crazy for living on Grant Street as a woman, I never had a problem.   I loved being in the midst of all the revitalization, I felt like I had this great, perfect, secret home on a frontier that was being pioneered. Those same people that gave me so much grief, who were afraid to even drive down to Grant Street and visit me, now regularly shop at Guercio's and are apartment hunting in the area. 


When I first moved back, I began a project photographing houses on the East side.  When I moved onto Grant Street in the spring, I began walking around my neighborhood and reacquainting myself with the Lower West Side--there my photo projects began focusing on the neighborhoods. 

When I was overseas, I spent a lot of time in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Vietnam, India, Laos, and Cambodia, so to be surrounded by a community that was peppered with diversity-Vietnamese, Laotian, African, Puerto Rican, Italian--it just felt so real, so rich, and so much like home.  My family immigrated to the US from Poland when I was just a month old because my father was in the solidarity movement and was forced to leave.  My parents came here with 3 kids, a few suitcases, and hope for a chance at a new life, so when I walk the streets and see how many of the immigrants are forced to live-in poor conditions because of slumlords, poverty, and a mismanaged city that perpetuates the community's decline, well I feel very connected to them.  There is a very enduring quality about the people who live here, and the pride they hold on to.

ECB: You've grown up there, worked there, gone to school there, become familiar with the businesses, community--and you've worked elbow to elbow with the activist/advocates that are working on behalf of the West Side.  Your opinion: on the way up or down, and why?

VC: Definitely up.  There is so much community activism and passion in those who are supporting revitalization projects, it is really heartening to see.  Sweetness_7 Cafe has been a big hub in networking and connecting many people who are involved in the much of the activism, and having worked there, seeing the people and ideas pass through day by day...it's really powerful seeing what people can do when they take things into their own hands.  It's not only in the physical structures, but the mentality of people who are seeing the area more and more for the beauty and potential that it holds.  Civic evolution is not always positive, particularly when a city is run by politicians who don't care about the local citizens, and who continue to disappoint those who depend on them.  Organizations like PUSH, Buffalo ReUse, Grant Ferry Organization, and the Massachusetts Avenue Project are empowering people to take a grassroots approach to rebuilding the quality of life we deserve, to challenge the status quo, and it's really amazing to see.

ECB:  What is it you're hoping your audience will see?

VC: I'm hoping my audience will see the cultural value and beauty of these neighborhoods. They are not just grids of streets with dilapidated homes and boarded-up buildings.  They are not worthless communities infested with drugs, gangs, and prostitution.  These are communities rich with culture and these people are worthy of our help.  Most people look at a boarded-up home, its shattered glass, its peeling paint, its overgrown garbage infested lawn, and they see...well, they see a shit hole that needs to be torn down.  I look at the house and wonder why it's in the shape it's in?  What's its story?  Who left it that way, and why?  I also see the potential and beauty in it if someone who cared about it could breath some life back into it.  In a culture where progress and materialism engrave the mentality to constantly throw out the old, buy better and new, to never truly appreciate what we have, to rebuild cheap and temporary, what happens to our values?  We leave fingerprints of our progress on everything we do and touch, but if we truly paid attention to the destruction we left behind, would we continue living the way we do? 

ECB: The houses and buildings you photographed, beyond some artful forms of time worn structures, what's the aura that surrounds them? 

VC: For me, it's the stories they tell through the evidence that's left behind.  When people suffer, the structure of a landscape suffers.  Forgotten structures bridge the past and the present, and they are the lingering clues to human existence where life seems absent.  We all leave fingerprints, and though I choose to never include people in my photographs, essentially it's about the people who impact the area.

ECB: Who should see your show?

VC: Everyone.  It's important for every citizen of Buffalo to know what's going on around them, even if it's not where they live.  The west side declined over time through the collective effects of the evolution of our city--we all play a role in that.

Opening reception, 7 to 10PM on the 25th. Show will run until the 2nd week in October.