Kelly Drive and 8th Avenue

by Bethany Altschwager

“In my formative years, I fell in love with the magic of light and chemistry of darkroom photography to create images of new worlds through experimental processes. I was inspired by modernists, admiring how they framed humble objects as majestic subjects. My work similarly reflects appreciation for the surfaces of everyday things. Moving to New York, the textures around me changed from the natural world to the concrete and spray paint of the city. Images in the Street Layers series are digital collages of graffiti and textures I’ve found traveling through urban landscapes. I pull images from different neighborhoods, experimenting with how they meld together. On the surface, the titles read as cross streets in NYC neighborhoods, but the titles represent new, liminal spaces that do not exist in physical reality. Preserving that which, by its nature, will be washed away, painted over, reconstructed, repaired, or torn down highlights the tension between holding on and letting go.”