06 NOV 08: Repair & Shine by Lindsay Blatt
Repair & Shine
Photographs by Lindsay Blatt
06 – 30 NOV 08
OPENING RECEPTION
THURSDAY 06 NOV 08 5 - 9 PM
With live music by: Hang the Lights and Giancarlo Vulcano's Vetro.
Sponsored by a Brooklyn Arts Council DCA Regrant
On view: Wed-Fri 6-8p and by appointment through November 30th.
In our throw-away world teeming with molded plastic products, Lindsay pauses to celebrate the tradition of skillful repair carried out with age-old skills and time-honored tools. Little removed from their traditional roots, the shoe repairmen in Lindsay's photos mend footwearin a manner that has not changed for decades. Enter these photographs and you smell the tanning solutions, the scent of leather, the sweat of honest labor. Behind the assembly lines and blister packs, Lindsay reveals an unseen realm where practiced hands refurbish, resole, and breathe new life into shoes that have lives of their own. She celebrates the dedication of these men who persevere generation after generation in tiny shops filled with spinning brushes, leather stitchers, and shoe forms. With the detail of a 4x5 view camera- itself an anachronistic instrument in a digital world- Lindsay's work, too, is a labor of love.
Lindsay Blatt specializes in large format photography, focusing on environmental portraiture and still life. She earned a BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute, and was honored with their Outstanding Merit in Photography award. Lindsay has exhibited her photographs at the Steuben Gallery, the Hammerstein Ballroom, Slideluck Potshow V, and the 2006 Rider Project. She co-curated the Rider Project's 2006 "Neubees" exhibition, a mobile show installed in the back of a moving truck that traveled throughout New York City. The Brooklyn Arts Council awarded Lindsay a 2008 grant in support of her large-format photo essay on Brooklyn's shoe repairmen. Her work is in the collections of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law and 826NYC. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Also featuring John Richey's untitled. (underground): a 3-minute hand drawn video animation about traveling through the city by subway. This short piece about gesture, disrepair, and loss of control utilizes a simplistic line quality to mimic the sometimes soothing, sometimes anxiety provoking experience of train travel.
Artists: Lindsay Blatt, Hang the Lights, Giancarlo Vulcano's Vetro · Video, “untitled. (underground)”: John Richey
Photos and ephemera
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Press
- Platform21 (Amsterdam design platform; 'Repair & Shine' page) (Interview)
Q&A with photographer Lindsay Blatt about her large-format photo essay on Brooklyn shoe repairmen, funded by a 2008 Brooklyn Arts Council grant; states it was shown as the solo exhibition Repair & Shine at the Rabbithole Gallery in DUMBO in November 2008.
“The large-format photo essay on Brooklyn’s shoe repairmen was shown as a solo exhibition called Repair & Shine, viewed at the Rabbithole Gallery in DUMBO, …”
original
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Reconstructed for this archive from the show’s own card and texts; not posted at the time. Part of the Rabbithole timeline.