New York’s water collects in 18 reservoirs upstate before being conveyed into our kitchens and bathrooms. Since the early 1990s, photographer Stanley Greenberg has documented the city’s vast water infrastructure network; it helped that he was a former employee of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. After decades of work, the result is Waterworks, his latest book, published by KGP MONOLITH earlier this year.
Greenberg was invited to photograph many of New York’s tunnels and facilities in the late 1990s, but this access ended after 9/11. Since then, he has focused his camera on the traces of the water system that are visible throughout the city. The resulting portfolio sequences dramatic shots of machines and tunnels with gridded collections of ventilator shafts, pumping stations, and manhole covers. Some of the facilities are abandoned or overgrown, which, when combined with the brooding black and white treatment, establishes an elegiac sentiment. Greenberg’s book is a powerful and beautiful reminder of a public utility that is essential—and largely invisible.
→ Continue reading at The Architect's Newspaper
