Opening today at the Front Room Gallery in New York City, “Lost Utopias” features New York–based photographer Jade Doskow‘s decade-long photographic documentation of the architecture that remains of the international world’s fairs held in North American and Europe. The show, that marks Doskow’s first solo exhibition in the city, will remain on display through May 20.
Jade Doskow/Courtesy Front Room Gallery
New York 1964 World's Fair, "Peace Through Understanding," Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion (fresh paint)
Jade Doskow/Courtesy Front Room Gallery
Montreal 1967 World's Fair, "Man and His World," Habitat ‘67
The exhibited photographs capture aging of once-futuristc monuments such as the Space Needle designed by artist Edward Carlson and architect John Graham for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, André Waterkeyn’s Atomium designed for the 1958 exposition in Brussels, and the McBarge designed by naval architecture firm Robert Allan for the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication in Vancouver, British Columbia. Using long exposure photography techniques with her large-format 4″x5″ Arca-Swiss film camera, Doskow has created contrasting images of stillness, projected by the built environment, juxtaposing smears of motion attributed to people, transportation, and the natural environment. Doskow’s frames stand in contrast to their contemporary surroundings and reveal “how these provocative and grandiose sites exist now, whether tourist attraction, repurposed for less noble aspirations, or neglected and forgotten,” according to a press release.
Jade Doskow/Courtesy Front Room Gallery
Brussels 1958 World's Fair, "A World View: A New Humanism," Atomium
Jade Doskow/Courtesy Front Room Gallery
New York 1964 World's Fair, "Peace Through Understanding," Unisphere
“I have always been interested in architecture that had outlived its original purpose,” said Doskow in an interview with New York–based author Vladimir Belogolovsky that was featured in her book, Lost Utopias: Photographs by Jade Doskow (Black Dog Publishing, 2016). “As well as photography’s innate ability to ‘quote’ slices of visual information across history and place, the unique ability of this medium to act as a time machine.”
According to Doskow’s website, American documentary filmmaker Philip Shane is currently working on a documentary based on her photography project that had resulted in the Lost Utopias book. The documentary is expected to be released this year.
“Lost Utopias” will next be exhibited at the Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, N.C., on June 1 and will remain on display through July 28.
