Gilad Edelman Photo
On his way to a downtown appointment, Bren Bater unexpectedly ran into hundreds of faces looking out at him from a telephone pole.
“It gets one’s attention,” he said as he scanned the column of black and white photos.
This was the latest stop of Inside Out NHV, a roving, unofficial, temporary exhibit that has popped up in various parts of town and prompted an ongoing debate about public art along the way.
Last year, the project’s creator, Ben Berkowitz (at left in photo below), and allies organized and temporarily placed massive photo portraits of New Haveners for a while on walls underneath highway overpasses near Bradley Street and Jocelyn Square. (Read about that here.) Last month, the images were displayed indoors, at the Hilles Gallery at the Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) on Audubon Street. (Read about that here.)
This week Berkowitz stapled miniature versions of the same photos onto a telephone pole in a parking lot across from the State Street train station.
Bater (at right in photo, with Berkowitz), a photography enthusiast who lives in Westchester County, N.Y, admired the quality and composition of the portraits. Bharad Manghnani, who manages the parking lot, was more interested in the contents.
“It reminds you of all the people you knew, you grew up with,” said Manghnani (pictured), who lives in Morris Cove.
“Memories are good,” he added with a chuckle.
Manghnani, who from his booth has a view of the mini-installation, said many people have been stopping to look at the photos. “Some actually spend 10 to 15 minutes.”
Mid-afternoon amid the heat and humidity Wednesday, passersby didn’t tend to notice the photos or show much interest once they saw them.
“I didn’t notice until you pointed it out, honestly,” said Brock, a man in business clothes who would give only his first name. He recognized the photos from the original underpass mural.
“They need to be bolder and bigger,” he said of the new smaller version. “And black and white’s not gonna work. It needs to pop.”
The subtlety of the smaller photos may be what Berkowitz, the creator, has in mind. He said the next installment of the project, to be called Photobomb NHV, will be a game challenging people to find the small portraits posted individually throughout the city. The images will have some clue to let viewers know they’ve stumbled into a game.
I'm all in favor of creativity in the public space, but isn't stapling stuff to utility poles illegal? And who is gonna remove all those staples from the pole when the photos have all turned to mush after a few rainstorms?