Vanishing City is a visual documentary about architecture and redevelopment in Newark.
I am witness to the poetic decay of my city’s cultural heritage. An abandoned barge sinks in murky waters. A former factory tumbles before the wrecking ball. A sea of weeds lays siege to a vacant home. An empty lot is a gaping hole, a missing tooth, in the urban body. As a wall crumbles to the ground, a tree, anchored to the wall, reaches for the sky. While my city’s industrial past succumbs to demolition, new buildings grow from old lots.
Behind this slow decay, there is a hidden beauty in the transient. It is the realization that what was built to last forever will not last. It is the expectation that the destruction of the past could contain the seeds of a better city. The ruin forces the viewer to imagine and reconstruct what was there in ways the restored building does not.
Will the monuments we erect to culture and capitalism endure? The ruins of the Athenian Acropolis became a symbol for democracy. Could the same fate await our society’s equivalent forums, the strip mall, grocery store, and drive-thru? Will we be good ancestors?
My transient urban environment compels me to examine and re-examine my sense of place before it vanishes from memory.
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Newark Broad Street Station
Murphy Varnish Factory
Polhemus House demolition
Pulaski Skyway
Pulaski Skyway
Penn Station Newark drawbridge
Port Newark tire yard
Port Newark freight yard
“Revitalization” of Baxter Terrace
City in transit
Roman ruins
Progress Inc.
Progress Inc.
Pulaski Skyway
Polhemus House demolition
Polhemus House demolition
Westinghouse demolition near Newark Broad Street Station
Waiting for demolition at the “Little Annie Drawbridge”
Last Sunset
Downtown Newark
Rusting barge
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Baxter Terrace Projects
Illegal Demolition
Baxter Terrace Projects
Neighborhood resident Angel and his dog Tigressa stand before Murphy Varnish
Illegal Demolition
Polhemus Home
Polhemus Home
Polhemus Home
Polhemus Home
Rubble in 2009
The Chimney Falls – 2008
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Downtown Newark
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Newark Broad Street Station
