Miska Draskoczy: Gowanus Wild
Silence. A lack of humans. Light on textured abstraction. Chaotic forms unfolding all around you, creating a hypnosis of spirit that just might convince you there is a Creator after all. These are the qualities I think of when experiencing ‘wilderness’. And yet the same tingle runs down my spine while wandering the industrial streets of Gowanus, Brooklyn, at night.
My vision for this ongoing series is to capture a unique marriage of opposites; the organic in the industrial, life surrounded by decay, green within blacks and grays, stillness and peace in urban chaos. I aim to turn concepts of nature photography on their head by finding the beautiful in what most consider to be a man-made environmental catastrophe. The Gowanus Canal is one of the most polluted waterways in the country and the neighborhood has seen continuous industrial use since the 19th century. As our urban communities grapple with how to connect with feelings of wilderness in a world that offers sterile landscape architecture as an outlet to nature, a fascinating landscape can be found in the fringes of our decaying city where nature and chaos produce a new type of wild beauty.
These images will be on exhibit from Friday, February 7th through Sunday, March 2nd, 2014.
Selection of images from the exhibition:
See more of Miska’s work online HERE.
Miska Draskoczy fell in love with cameras at age 14 and has been behind them ever since. His career has included diverse projects such as co-founding a conceptual arts organization, directing surreal sci-fi shorts, writing and developing a Slamdance shortlisted horror feature, and creating a documentary web series about objects in people’s homes. Miska’s photography has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad and is the recipient of numerous awards. His urban wilderness series, Gowanus Wild, was shown on THE FENCE at PHOTOVILLE 2013 in Brooklyn, NY, recently featured on The New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog, and exhibited as a solo show at the Vermont Center for Photography. In addition to his personal projects Miska works as a director, editor, and animator through his production company snow23, and is an avid rock and ice climber.