younger than i'll be - curated by skye parrott

Opening Reception: Wed, April 7, 6—8 PM

Exhibition: April 7—May 23

Natman Room, BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building

Artists:

David Armstrong / Cass Bird / Larry Clark / Jessica Craig-Martin / Adrian Gaut / Nan Goldin / Marcelo Gomes / Saul Leiter / Robert Longo / Skye Parrott / Virginia Parrott / Jack Pierson / David Schoerner / Peter Sutherland / WeeGee


Curatorial Statement:
“When I started the process of putting together this photography show, I thought it was going to be about New York and its many incarnations. However, as I started to edit, I realized that what I was putting together was a portrait of New York past–the city as it was when I was growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s. Not all of the works date from those years, but they all encompass the feeling of being young in the city as it was before the big boom, back when Manhattan could still feel dangerous.

“Being young here was a singular experience–riding the subways, walking everywhere, phone booths, beepers, sitting on stoops, the feeling that you owned everything. Part of that was just the joy and omnipotence of adolescence. Part of it is the overwhelming experience of coming into one’s own in a place as exceptional as New York.

“I wanted to include works that showed that unfettered abandon of youth (Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities and Cass Bird’s flashers on the FDR), the feeling of being so deeply and recklessly in love, with someone else, or with yourself (stills from Larry Clark’s Kids and Nan Goldin’s Heart-Shaped Bruise), and the haziness of trying to catch a memory (David Armstrong’s blurred buildings and Saul Leiter’s multi-layered cityscapes shot in the late 1950s). I wanted to capture the vast sense of possibility New York offers, and yet the way the city permeates on such a personal level.” – Skye Parrott

Skye Parrott is a photographer and creative director based in Brooklyn, NY. As the daughter of a photographer, she grew up with a camera, but studied political science at UCLA before moving to Paris in 2001. She worked there as a freelance photo assistant, managing editor at Self Service Magazine, and studio manager to Nan Goldin before starting on her own as a photographer in 2004. She has exhibited widely, published several small volumes of her work, and been commissioned by clients as diverse as The New York Times, British Vogue and Jill Stuart. In 2008 she co-founded Dossier, an independent arts magazine and Dossierjournal.com, a cultural website. Dossier seeks to present fashion, literature and the arts and in one volume. It publishes twice a year and is based in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn.