When the real estate bust of the 1970s hit New York City, artists found their own mixed uses for the city’s run-down lofts, abandoned piers, vacant lots, and deserted streets, and photographers
and filmmakers documented their work. Gordon Matta-Clark turned a sanitation pier into the celebrated work Day’s End, and Betsy Sussler filmed its making; Harry Shunk made a photographic
series from Willoughby Sharp’s Projects: Pier 18 (which included work by Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and William Wegman, among others); Cindy Sherman
staged some of her Untitled Film Stills on the same city streets. Mixed Use, Manhattan documents and illustrates the most significant of these projects as well as more recent
works by artists who continue to engage with the city’s public, underground, and improvised spaces.
The book (which accompanies a major exhibition) focuses on several important photographic series: Peter Hujar’s 1976 nighttime photographs of Manhattan’s West Side; Alvin Baltrop’s Hudson River
pier photographs from 1975-1985, most of which have never before been shown or published; David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979), the first of Wojnarowicz’s works to be
published; and several of Zoe Leonard’s photographic projects from the late 1990s on. The book includes 70 color and 130 black-and-white images; a special section on visual documentation of
performances and related activities, arranged by artist Louise Lawler; Glenn Ligon’s text piece, Housing in New York: A Brief History, 1960-2007 (2007); “Losing the Form in Darkness,” an
autobiographical story by David Wojnarowicz; and essays by prominent art historians.
Essays by: Johanna Burton, Lynne Cooke, Douglas Crimp, Lytle Shaw, Juan A. Suarez
Exhibition: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, June 9–September 27, 2010
Distributed by the MIT Press for the Reina Sofia Museum
