Reclaiming History

What you're looking at is one of the earliest photographs of Manhattan, a daguerrotype taken in 1848, and which was expected to be sold earlier today at auction by Sotheby's for up to $70,000. The image, which depicts a farmhouse on a hilltop in what is now the Upper West Side, is one of the few to show an area north of 14th Street, which, at the time, was considered the upper limits of Manhattan. (Imagine New York ending at Union Square!) Without context, this picture probably doesn't hold much interest for the average viewer, but for New Yorkers, most of whom I suspect cannot imagine our City, our shapeshifting, ever-developing City, as once existing as a swath of pristine, unsullied land, this daguerrotype is a reminder that history has a way of coming back in ways both unexpected and revelatory.

Oh, and that stretch of road in the foreground? That's Broadway.

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You may be familiar, without knowing it, of the work of Terry Richardson, photographer, artist-about-world, bon vivant. Richardson has taken commissions for some of the world's major fashion houses, and has shot album covers for acts as varied as Bad Religion and Justin Timberlake. Most recently, Richardson photographed the lead actresses of the televised teen drama "Gossip Girl," for a cover that is perhaps the most suggestive that Rolling Stone has ever printed (this from a magazine that has shown Blind Melon and Christina Aguilera without so much as a guitar pick).

As a photographer and, I suspect, an everyday person, Terry Richardson relentlessly holds, without any sense of shame, to some pretty base instincts: physical passion, hedonism, and, above all, unbridled fun. While Richardson's work can be described as vile, prurient, and even juvenile, it cannot be argued that Richardson doesn't enjoy what he does; the man likes to play, not only with his subjects, but with his viewers: He makes us uncomfortable, makes us question whether what we are looking at is art or a cheap excuse for pornography, but in the end, it is his sense of bonhomie that is inescapable. How else to explain the twisted feeling one gets when looking at a picture of a gun, a condom wrapped around its barrel?

It's hard to make artistic arguments for Richardson's approach, given that just about anyone can pick up an Instamatic (nostalgia, anyone?) and shoot one's sexual exploits or the raging party from which you're still recovering, but there's no reason to come up with one, really. Richardson's pictures, however graphic, disturbing, and unnecessary, still point to one of the reasons why photography remains so essential: Without it, the moments in our history, however mundane, collective or otherwise, would be relegated to the library stacks of memory, left to fade in yet another drawer, yet another folder, inundated with yesterday's papers.

Link:
Richardson, in interview, on YouTube

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Anyone ever read Susan Sontag's On Photography? It is absolute genius, and I can't believe that I've lived this long without having been aware of its lessons. If you've read it, let us know what you think...

[D | R]