By Jennifer Walsh
An ongoing show entitled When The Financial Levees Broke by Buffalo
photojournalist Clark Dever opened Friday, July 10th, at the Grant
Street Gallery. After visiting
post-Katrina New Orleans and viewing the ultimate destruction that occurred,
Dever returned to Buffalo with new eyes. As he was preparing for the Buffalo
Marathon and passing through Buffalo’s most impoverished neighborhoods, he felt
as though he was revisiting the post-Katrina destruction. He noticed that the
neighborhoods he passed through appeared eerily similar to neighborhoods in New
Orleans, some abandoned with only debris of a past life remaining.
(Post-Katrina New Orleans)
(Post-industrial Buffalo)
At
opening night at the Grant Street Gallery, representatives from local
organizations such as PUSH Buffalo and Buffalo ReUse greeted visitors. The
event served as a great networking opportunity and activism event. The
photographs wrapped the perimeter of the gallery, with views of post-industrial
Buffalo on the right and post-Katrina on the left. Meeting in the center were
two beautifully printed panoramic views of a Buffalo block devoid of
inhabitants and a block in New Orleans that was utterly swept away in the
destruction of the storm.
When
The Financial Levees Broke draws strong conceptual connections between the
destruction of New Orleans and Buffalo’s post-industrial demise, especially
through photographs entitled “Interior of a Post-Katrina Home” and “Interior of
a Business”.
In “Interior of a
Business” (above), the viewer is offered a glimpse of the inside of a building on
Buffalo’s East Side that was once a thriving business. The photograph
demonstrates that a place once full of life and thriving with action is now
crumbling and empty. It appears as though operations ceased, and the occupants
took what they needed and moved on, leaving debris behind. This photograph is
all-too reminiscent of old thriving businesses across the city that were forced
to shut their doors when the post-industrial period made them obsolete.
The photograph entitled “Interior of a
Post-Katrina Home” (above) depicts the master bedroom of a New Orleans home, with
personal artifacts strewn about as a family gathered what they could take with
them to move onward. It appears as though the family frantically searched for
what they could carry with them as they fled the city. One could imagine the
number of New Orleans bedrooms left in this manner, especially as Dever
illustrates the number of homes left in a standstill. The cross sections
offered in these two photographs depict scenes of post-destruction flight from
two cities over one thousand miles apart. The
photographs of the post-industrial Buffalo landscape, as captivating as they
were, tell the tale of so many cities that have fallen victim to this type of
economic decline.
These images are not
necessarily readable as distinctly Buffalonian, but perhaps could tell the
story of urban centers across the country in post-industrial Rust Belt cities.
Although
the photographer draws strong thematic comparisons between Buffalo’s
impoverished neighborhoods and post-Katrina New Orleans, the construction of
the show could have allowed the viewer to conceive closer connections between
images. Photographs that were very closely connected were not placed near each
other, and with Dever’s large amount of material offered, it becomes difficult
to view all the photographs and make connections afterwards. The two
aforementioned images for example could have been placed more closely to each
other to bring their significance to the forefront, and enhance the
connectedness they share. Dever could have drawn upon the strengths of the two
panoramic photographs in the center of the exhibit to share the
inter-relatedness of the two cities.
Clark Dever’s exhibit
When The Financial Levees Broke will be on display at the Grant Street Gallery,
216 Grant Street, through July 16th.
Top image: Jennifer Link @ jennifer-link.com