Next Stop Atlantic
Solo Exhibition of Photographs by Stephen Mallon
Calumet Photographic
22 West 22nd Street, 2nd Floor
NY, NY
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3rd from 6-9pm.
Opening Thursday, February 3rd from 6-9pm,
Calumet Photographic will be hosting “Next
Stop Atlantic,” an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon.
In his second solo exhibition at the gallery Mallon presents
a stunning series of photographs, which capture
the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway cars to the
depths of the Atlantic Ocean. In a bold move, the NYC Transit
authority joined the artificial reef building program off the
East Coast of the US in 2000 and sent stripped and
decontaminated subway cars off on barges to be dropped
into the Ocean in order to build refuge for many species
of fish and crustaceans which would colonize the structures.
Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way
towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the
viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are
transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer
of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly
depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren
hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of
sunshine streams through their removed doors as they
wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths
of the ocean floor.
Mallon’s photographs elicit both the sadness and the
beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures
of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface
of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time.
Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following
this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC
Transit’s involvement in this program. The photographs
that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity
of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars
can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the
water.
These photographs are from Mallon’s
continuing series; “American Reclamation” which
chronicles and examines recycling processes in the U.S.
This series holds optimism in the innovation of salvaging
techniques, showing the possible gains that can be
made as industrial waste is revivified. In “Next Stop Atlantic”
Mallon determinedly tracks the final stage of the
lives of these, once indispensable modes of transit for
passengers on the New York subway lines, canonizing
them in New York history.
