Dark City Exhibition in East Village
Dark City tales, Friday's exhibition reception and Birthday Print sale update.
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To start the year off with something fun, I am collaborating with my favorite local East Village coffeeshop for an exhibition of Dark City. The coffee shop/gallery space has been the heart of Alphabet City for more than a decade, and it’s one of those invaluable New York City places where you feel a sense of community. It is a treat to show Dark City in East Village, the place that inspired it most.
To kick off the exhibition, I will be having a reception this Friday, January 12, 7-9pm. If you are in the area, stop by and say hi.
Reception, 7-9pm, Friday, Jan 12.
341 E 10th St (ave B)
My Birthday Print Sale was wild! Many of the photos were offered as prints for the first time, and I have never done an initialed print sale before, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. But in one week, to my great surprise, it sold over 100 prints. All the images were limited to 15, and this became the Birthday edition 2023. Thank you to everyone who got one!
The prints are all packaged and ready to go (and everyone should have received a tracking number), but since there are so many of them, they will be sent out in batches over the next week. Please be patient and give it 2-3 weeks, especially if you ordered it from Europe/Asia.
The most popular photo from the print sale was Hotel Windows, and it completely sold out in the edition of 15. It is on view (and for sale) now in the East Village exhibition.
Seeing Dark City hung on the walls of my favorite coffeeshop took me back to those three months of quarantine in the spring of 2020, which by now, have become a hazy dream. As always happens with the distance of time, they are now cloaked in a fuzzy shawl of nostalgia.
In March of 2020, the loudest emotions were shock and fear, anxiety, and claustrophobia. But there was also a strange coziness, a pause from the usual incessant timeline of plans and obligations. The monotony, though seemingly unbearable in the beginning, became soothing. There were no weekdays, no weekends, and no FOMO.
My therapy during quarantine was going out almost every night to photograph in Manhattan. During the day, the tragedy of the pandemic was ever-present and palpable. The city seemed completely subdued by the virus, the silence of grey streets shattered only by frantic ambulances. But the moment the sun set, the city transformed once again, becoming eerie and beautiful. At twilight, all the lights turned on as usual — the neon signs, the colorful LED screens, and warm streetlights — illuminating Manhattan as an empty film noir set. Walking for hours, I got to see the city devoid of distractions. Unexpectedly, New York City, which can swallow up people in its gargantuan anonymity, became intimate and somehow private.
Looking at the photos now, each image feels like a fleeting hallucination, an interrupted moment in our collective timeline. It's those uncanny moments of silence that I miss the most about the spring of 2020. They gave me the space to reset and recalibrate while bringing me closer to a city that I've spent more than a decade photographing.
Here are some of the photos from the exhibit and their stories.
May, Soho. I went back to this train station more times than any other location, trying to capture the red of the LED advertisement. Sometimes an hour would pass by before seeing a single person. One night this guy was disinfecting the stairway. This was exactly the shot I needed and I never went back.
May, Astor Place. I stumbled on this guy jumping rope in an otherwise totally empty square. In that light, he seemed to be levitating, and I had to take the photo. He saw and ignored me, as if I were a ghost.
April, 2nd Ave. East Village. Dog walkers seemed to be the only people left in the city.
April. East Village. This man in front of the pharmacy looked like he was waiting to be beamed into a spaceship. I wanted to capture the silence of the city by focusing on people standing perfectly still, a previously unusual sight in the hectic metropolis.
April, Ave A & Tompkins. For three months, New York City resembled Hopper’s nighttime universe. The empty streets were punctuated by windows that were glowing like fireflies in the alienating darkness, revealing glimpses of domestic warmth.
May. Roosevelt Tram Station, 59th street. The first couple of months, almost all the images were of men. Very few women were out alone at night. I took this in May from the top of the Roosevelt Island Tram station.
Hope to see some of you this Friday!
Find me on Instagram @dina_litovsky
I love this series