Living in the Broome Street dorms has it perks- delicious food from little Italy, knockoffs from Chinatown, trendy shops in SoHo- but on Wednesday I discovered another perk of living downtown. On my walk back to the dorms, I happened to stumble on a massive mob of trendy people standing outside Clic Gallery. The exhibition reception happened to be featuring a well-known New York photographer, Sue Kwon. Known most predominantly in the Hip-Hop world, Kwon played a quintessential role in the documentation of life in New York from 1987 to 2007.
The empirical value of her work for recording the rise of hip- hop in America is similar to the role of Robert Frank in depicting life of America in 1955. However, instead of showing the oppression of Blacks, her work highlights how the advent of hip-hop changes the role of Blacks in society. What struck me as most important to her documentation of the developing hip-hop culture was how she showed the growing economic divide between Blacks. Her juxtaposition of Biggie Smalls living in luxury with an abundance of champagne bottles and a poor black man shining shoes on the street for a living is evidence of the sudden leap of Blacks off the streets into the entertainment industry. Sue Kwon’s photographs are essential documents to the history of New York and I would place her with Robert Frank among the great photographers of American life. If you are ever around Broome Street, stop by Clic Gallery. Here’s the link:
http://clicgallery.com/info/2009-09-kwon/
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