Photographer Katja Rahlwes describes her images as “Cool Women, or better: Femme Intense.” She re-phrases the perception of the female gaze, with her own unfaltering approach to shooting women who are in command of every shot. Her glamazonian subjects often subvert the idea of the classic pinup. Katja has contributed to independent publications such as Self Service, i-D, Dutch, Butt and Made in USA. She has also created works for the fashion houses Celine, Chloe, Miu Miu, A.P.C, Maison Martin Margiela and Gucci. Katja’s closest relationship to date has been with Purple. Her most recent collaboration was the Full Moon supplement for issue #16, comprised of childhood pictures, Polaroid snapshots and a number of her own collection of vintage postcards. The zine is rendered with a combination of black and white images next to a neon orange colourwash. With her numerous editorials, intimate still-life pieces and self-portraits, Katja’s images make for a rich portfolio.

Natasha Arnold: How did you acquire a taste for fashion photography?

Katja Rahlwes: From an early age I was drawn to imagery through magazines. I’d cut out everything that triggered an emotion in me, made me dream, escape or move. I still have a huge collection of bits and pieces, photo cut-outs, postcards, entrance tickets.

Natasha: How did you develop your attachment to still-life photography?

Katja: It’s a very personal process for me to work on stills, I really love that moment when I start setting up a scenario, it’s quiet, there is suspense. My aim was to inject some new sense to it. It all started when I took more and more pictures of my personal environment. I did that to remind me of ideas or situations or set ups I liked. It was a sort of diary memo work. I then discovered the magic of mini photo sets, the way you would set up a situation inspired by the items you photograph. Great design has a lot of soul, so a fabulous pair of shoes can lead you in quite a storyboard.

Natasha: You’ve had a strong connection to independent publications throughout your career. What is your main drive behind this line of work?

Katja: Basically, independent publications allow you to develop your groundwork. You are more or less free to let run your creative thoughts. There is also something quite confidential about it, you work close with a team of people and you sense the passion everybody has for what they do, that is so important. Some magazines can become your house of thoughts.

Natasha: You have worked a lot with Purple. I loved your recent supplement. Can you talk us through the ideas behind the display of intimate childhood Polaroids and vintage postcards?

Katja: That book is a collaboration with Olivier Zahm and I guess we are still looking for who I am. I think we all are driven by a moment of time and images we never forget or helped us form a point of view. I am, for sure. I collected the vintage postcards at the time they were absolutely not vintage but they are today. Postcards help me to capture a moment of me being somewhere no matter where and what I do. A postcard is always the ideal representation of something. At least, I would say that is the intention of a postcard. For me, I sense a lot of loneliness from a postcard too. It really makes me think.

Natasha: In your formative years you worked as a fashion illustrator, fashion stylist and studied fashion design at Studio Berçot. With such a multi-disciplinary background, is there a path outside of photography you’d like to pursue?

Katja: I don’t know, but it is true I am thinking about it a lot, “What is my next step?” I love furniture and lamps, I would love to be able to just buy everything I discover in that domain and furnish a big house or an entire village!

Natasha: Who are your art heroes and why are they important to you?

Katja: I was actually really blown away by a recent show I saw in Paris at The Museum of Modern Art by Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. I thought to myself: if you come up to such a high point of realization about our today’s today, what’s next? How can you move on and not go crazy? Super hyper lucidity, they are quite strong out there.

Natasha: Could you pinpoint your personal influences?

Katja: Really everything has an influence on me. Essentially it would be my dilemma and my strength.

Natasha: Living between Paris, London, New York and then your home of Frankfurt- are there any tangible differences between each city? Do you have a favorite?

Katja: No, no favorite, but a place like Frankfurt am Main is nice because it’s a ‘wannabe big’ city with all the wannabe clichés of a branded city like Paris or New York, but then its very provincial too. Those elements are very touching to me. I gain new headspace when I go there. I am currently working on a book called Paris am Main, the romantic drama of messed up perspectives.

Natasha: What is your stance on the fashion industry today?

Katja: There is a lot to say, it’s a very reactive ground. I think its best to keep it in the open.

Natasha: Do you think there is something a female photographer can access that male photographers cannot?

Katja: I wonder is it really about making the difference? Because I think the work you do is due to the individual and the therefore each approach is different.

Natasha: What is next for you?

Katja: Going back to work!

All Images, Katja Rahlwes

These are questions I feel like these people might ask me, but instead I ask myself, just in their voice, because it’s a good exercise in processing an experience you recently had. Here is my intro for myself: I take pictures of many things. Recently it has been notorious genre-busting musician Hank Williams III aka “Hank 3.”

Pretend I’m comedian Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the DEAL with your recent photos of Hank Williams III?”

Tara Israel: Hank 3 is a musician I adore, who navigates a number of seemingly unrelated genres of music with great success. I contacted him earlier this year because I wanted to do a photo essay that both looked at the stage clothes of country music legends and also explored at what I feel makes Hank 3 so special. I contacted him with an email only he would be crazy enough to respond to: “I have this great idea. I don’t know exactly what I want to do or even what I’m going to do with it but its going to be great. I’ll show up and you just change your clothes a few times. Easy breezy. Where do you live?” Two weeks later I was in Nashville knocking on the door to the Haunted Ranch (his home.) At the time I had no idea what Hank had access to but he took the time to collect what I styled into nine different looks. He pulled suits that had been made for his grandfather (Hank Williams Sr) and father (Hank Williams Jr), as well as one made for him in his youth, in addition to assorted stage looks he has worn, ranging from heavy metal inspired leather to his everyday look of a workshirt and boots. I admire Hank’s ability to pay homage to his family lineage yet not be limited by it.

Pretend I’m photographer Joel Sternfeld during a crit when you were his photo student: “What is a good photograph? Why are any of these good photographs?”

Tara Israel: What I try to achieve with my photos is to challenge my understanding of intimacy. Its not about hiding behind gimmicks like sexuality or relying on complicated production to create a false connection between the camera and the subject. The pictures are very simple, sometimes awkward or creepy, but always honest. Its about connecting with another person, which is often terrifying, and having fun with someone new. Its basically living in that electric moment before a first kiss or telling someone you love them for the first time, but because there are no words or kisses, it just becomes limitless potential. No fear of unrequited love, or bad kisses or the dreadful “now what?” when it starts to get stale.

Pretend I’m the I CAN HAZ A CHEEZBURGER cat: “Wut lessuns haz you lernd from this prossis? Do you evur feer that what matterz to you 2day will knot bee kulturally relevint toomaro?”

Tara Israel: I reject the need to create a linear path between the past and present, and I feel that Hank does the same. These images illustrate how he is able to simultaneously occupy all of these identities with ease, showing that he does not have to be one or the other, that one should not be restricted to genre titles or convention. Purist fans of country music need to accept that he is honoring the genre and his grandfather the best way he can- he just sometimes does it while wearing crazy costumes on stage and with a lot of headbanging. He is a living library of music references and anecdotes, allowing it to organically manifest throughout his art. I went to Nashville to shoot these portraits in June, on a particularly hot and oppressively humid week. One afternoon we planned on walking the trails behind his house to shoot him wearing his own suit made by Manuel. I suggested we wait until later that afternoon because I felt it was too muggy for him to go outside in a wool suit and hat. He looked at me and said, “My grandfather would tour in the back of a Cadillac wearing wool suits in the summer without air conditioning and perform on stage every night. I can handle standing around for an hour in my backyard.”

Pretend I’m your dentist at the exact moment he starts drilling a cavity: “So what else have you been up to lately?”

Tara Israel: I recently returned from a stint on the road with Hank 3, photographing his shows and behind the scenes. Despite his lineage, Hank is very much a DIY success story- from how he interacts with his fans to the recent release of three albums on his own label. He lives and breathes his music, from loading the gear onto the tour bus to signing autographs for every fan after he performs 3+ hour shows. I had never shot a concert before or even been on a tour bus, so it was learning how to accomplish what I wanted while staying out of the way of the 13 other people on the bus (and how to hold a camera still when you are balancing on a moving bus/ vibrating speaker/ using a taller person as a tripod).

Pretend I’m your mother Bonnie Schnitta: “Why am I so proud of you even though you never remember take out the garbage/ empty the dishwasher when you come to visit?”

Tara Israel: I just don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know. Sometimes you want to know you can count on people… Unfortunately you can only count on me forgetting these things. I’m consistent. You can count on that.

Pretend I’m your high school math teacher: “Please show your work”

Some of Tara Israel’s photos of Hank Williams III will be on view December 8 – January 3 at Keyes Art Projects, 551 W 21st St, 4th Floor, NYC.

The Still House Group is an artist-run arts community based in New York. Founded in 2007 by Isaac Brest and Alex Perweiler, they have produced numerous exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. This Friday, December 2, they will present Riffraff, a show curated by Cecelia Stucker, in Miami. The reception will be from 7-9 pm at 23NE 25 St. in Wynwood. These photos were taken during June and July of this year by Peter Sutherland, the collective’s first resident. To see more images, click “Read More.”

“Everything should be beautiful, if you can just start from there.”- AJR

Meet A. Jason Ross, the designer and master craftsman behind a stunning collection of accessories for men and women rapidly advancing into the realm of ‘must have’.  In truth, Ross already has a cult following of fashionistas as well as those who love to indulge in quiet luxury – his designs are absent of, so-called, ‘neon-sign’ labels.

Ross’s design studio is housed in the former Monarch Luggage factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  It’s a fitting home for the designer who crafts leather accessories under the name Artemas Quibble and the Creatures of Mme. Du Barry. Upon entering, you know that you are in an artisan’s lair. A visitor is immediately greeted with the sweet smell of leather and the various rhythms of cutting, sanding, hammering, pounding, forging, casting, soldering and buffing, this as artists are busy at work.  Hand-crafted tools, designed by Ross (he has 27 hammers), share wall space with leather swatches, thick, antique leather remnants, deconstructed keys and crops from other metal artifacts. Ross, with the help of lighting designer Robert Ogden collects a lot of antique materials. Huge windows usher in natural light – showcasing the beauty of the rough-hewn wood floors and the artful chaos of the studio’s walls.

The day I caught up with Ross, he was preoccupied with a new collaboration forged with Donna Karan – a stunning collection of belts for Karan’s ‘Casual Luxe’ line. Of course, that’s not all that’s keeping Ross busy these days. He pedals his wares at Urban Zen. There’s a venture with ABC and handbags for Henry Beguelin. He has also developed a bespoke service with Barney’s called the ‘Watch Transformation Project.’  This is not your father’s watchband, nor is it you your mother’s.  It’s a bold, innovative design embellished with an antique metal over-leather hinge, with a short or long, sinewy strap with or without a buckle. The leather’s rich patina lends a sublime elegance to the band.  Says Ross, “The watch mechanism is a very beautiful thing and I love the idea of having the raw, rougher antique metal work next to say a 19^th, 20^th or 21^st century watch.” A WTP band is a final flourish of one’s dress that uniquely presents a vibe that is both rugged and refined.

It’s a curious mix that is representative of Ross himself. Ross is a history and archeology-buff or “geek” depending on how you look at it. It’s that respect for the past that clearly informs his design sensibility. “My daily read is Archeology.org, Arts and Letters Daily and I also read the latest Discovery and that usually leads me to some kind of interesting website which might lead me in a new direction in my work,” he says adding, “I can look to any ancient period to find inspiration.” Ross admits that as a kid he was eager to dig up dinosaur bones in the yard of his family’s home, alas it never happened. During summer camp in Maine however, he recalls digging up old bottles and fragments of old bottles on the site of a former hospital. “I remember that as being tremendously exciting,” he says adding, “I like, with my work, to have history.”

Ross, who is also a guest lecturer at the Parsons School of Design, describes himself as an ‘abstract perfectionist’. When you look at his work, to the untrained eye, it looks like an accident when in fact there are blueprints, laws, rules and ‘illustrated tales’ that describe everything. “When you work with primitive tools which is part of the process of my work and part of what informs it, you have to have laws that govern the construction of the piece because there’s a certain randomness that happens,” according to Ross. He also gives credit to his girlfriend Natasha Chekoudjian, “She is a muse to me and is really amazing at sourcing ancient references.”

A Philadelphia transplant, Ross has been in Manhattan about a year and a half. The decision to make the move from Philly to Gotham was simple: he had a growing list of clients and business contacts in the City and wanted to be more accessible to them. “The reality is, there was not a store in Philadelphia selling my work,” according to Ross. He grew up on Philadelphia’s Main Line in a home appointed with French antiques, “a lot of gilt bronze,” he says. His mother, the late Caren Ross, in the 70’s, created a line of accessories including belts made of bullets under the label Bang Bang. His father Milton Ross was an inventor and manufacturer with an appreciation for Savile Row suits and Mr. Fish shirts. Ross, the younger, was educated at the elite Haverford School before attending Boston University.

He says he never thought he’d be making accessories. He started off making boxes constructed of reclaimed wood, lined with antique papers from engineering drawings. He then began making furniture. Ross developed an interest in accessories after becoming fascinated by leather machinery belting he saw at a wood-worker’s shop he was renting space in. Eventually, he began incorporating leather into his woodworking. At some point, he was asked to make a bracelet for a friend, Doub Hanshaw, who wore it to work. The buyers she worked with became interested in the bracelet and that ultimately translated into an order from Free People.

The label name, Artemas Quibble and Creatures of Mme du Barry, was initially a character to hide behind, as Ross didn’t see himself as an accessory designer – it was so distant from his woodworking. Nor did he see himself in the world of fashion because he was partly intimidated by it. In any case, Artemas Quibble, borrowed from the Arthur Cheney Train novel, had a quirky, enigmatic appeal. The Creatures of Madame du Barry has its roots in a guide to France from the late 1900’s. The curiously charming collision of the two names to create a label for his brand is also partly Ross railing against the machine. The ‘machine’ that, in a world of texts and tweets, compels ppl 2 shrtn evrythng.

With keen attention to detail a hallmark of who Ross is, intrepid photographer Weston Wells and I were eager to ‘pick his pockets’ and examine the details of his existence.

“I cannot walk out of the door without a journal and a pen in the same way I can’t walk of the door with my inhaler, I don’t know if I’m going to need it but I always have to have it,” says Ross adding that as an artist, “You have to be able to archive your ideas.” Ross makes his own journals using antique book covers. He mixes his own ink for the Mont Blanc pen he carries, “Hopefully it looks like the burnt umber you might find in da Vinci’s notebook or something… I dunno.” The specs are antiques. The two leather cases, Ross made for himself. One is a combination checkbook holder and wallet. The other case, in the photo, plays host to miscellaneous items including business cards, his iPhone, which is great for inspiration photos and mapping. A pocket-knife adorns the keychain. “It’s very functional. It seems like I’m always needing a little blade to open a package or cut a piece of leather,” he says. A final detail, not photographed, is what appears to be a remnant of a shirt or other much-loved article of clothing which has been resurrected as a scarf or roughly tied ascot.

Photography by Weston Wells

Tonight, November 17, a two-person exhibition of photographs by Heather Boose Weiss and Danelle Manthey is opening at Susan Eley Fine Art. Gallery One will features a dozen silver gelatin prints of landscapes by Boose Weiss, and in Gallery Two, ten ink jet portraits of individuals in color and black and white by Manthey. The show, entitled Winsome/Awesome, addresses the two artists’ relationship to nature and movement, as well as individuality.

Winsome/Awesome will be on view through December 30 at 46 W. 90 St., 2nd floor, NYC. The gallery is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 am-5 pm and by appointment.

This Thursday, November 10, Arts & Sciences Projects presents Proof of Purchase, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo’s first solo exhibition in New York City. Proof of Purchase investigates the contradictions embedded in advertising, global consumer culture, and the underlying motives deep within the new millennial psyche. Click “Read More” to see more and see you there.

Our friends at Family Bookstore are having an opening reception and book launch signing for the LA-based Rap group OFWGKA. Golf Wang features captured moments these friends have spent together and features work from Odd Future, Vyron Turner, Wolf Haley, Brick Stowell, Taco Bennett, Lucas Vercetti, Julian Berman and Sagan Lockhart. I imagine it should be an interesting evening. Here is some music to take you out. Click “Read More” for specifics. Onehundred.

These images are from Heavy Metal Family, a photographic series by Simon Cave that took him into the parking lots of metal concerts across the state. Hardcore fans turned out to be anything but. They were friendly, inviting and there was an unexpected camaraderie even amid the chaos. That’s the thing about true fans – they embody a character or image wholly and fully, and couldn’t care less about trends or brands. Coming from the fashion world, where ‘characters’ are constantly being manufactured and are highly produced, Cave says it was utterly refreshing to be surrounded by such authentic, organic characters. Or people, rather. Because the images from Heavy Metal Family show just that: normal guys living hard, every day. Click “Read More” to see more from the series.

Photos by Simon Cave. Text by Lily Kwong

When at night we close our eyes, the ensuing darkness wraps us in a blanket of fear. Photographer Lele Saveri’s latest book, Incubi et Succubi, is about turning this notion on its head, bringing his most intimate nightmares to light through visual tales of fear—and love.

Olivia Fincato: Why “incubi”?

Lele Saveri: I wanted to do something around horror. I grew up in Rome with Dario Argento and the [Roman Catholic] Church. I remember going to Dario’s shop; I loved that little museum with props, dummies and images of his movies. Then I remember going to church; my parents weren’t so religious but it was the only place to hang out. I was always fascinated with horror and mystic forces. In this book, I wanted to recreate visually one of my nightmares. I tried to visualize some recurrent images… It was also a way to exorcize them.

Olivia: What is your most hidden fear?

Lele: I am scared of many, many things. Physically, I am very scared of snakes. Mentally, I am very scared of wasting time… If I sleep more then five hours, I freak out.

Olivia: And how do you exorcize those fears….

Lele: For snakes, I directly face them! I did a photography project on snake compositions. I had to touch and move them around. I tried not to think about it and keep doing things…but when I stopped, I started shaking.

Olivia: And why “succubi”?

Lele: Incubi et succubi, incubus and succubus, are two demons, male and female. In the past, they were used to explain nightmares. If you had a bad dream, the Church would explain it as this little evil being coming in the night. If you were a woman, there was an incubus visiting your dreams; if were a man, a succubus.

Olivia: Really sexually related…

Lele: Yes, but I was more interested in the way they were used to reassure people…

Olivia: How long did you work in this project?

Lele: I started a year ago. During this year, I traveled a lot. I went to Sicily and Rome for some religious subjects, then I went to Staten Island to visit some haunted houses… Finally I went to New Jersey to shoot snakes—there are so many snake lovers in New Jersey!

Olivia: Who was the most melancholic character featured in the book?

Lele: I am interested in how the Church would represent the devil in human forms and this subject, the giudei of San Fratello, is very interesting. They are a group of 200 people in a small Sicilian village of 2,000. They dress up during the week of Easter to celebrate the death of Jesus, and they disappear after his resurrection. In the past they were supposed to scare people.

Olivia: They are more odd then scary… What is was the scariest thing you photographed?

Lele: This book was a full immersion into fear. In Sicily, two kids on a scooter tried to rob us in the middle of the day on the main street of Catania. That was scary. Then I was afraid of this big snake biting the owner, or when we got locked in the cemetery of Rome….there was a black cat following us everywhere.

Olivia: Some of the photos are very romantic indeed…

Lele: Fear is one of the most fascinating things for me. It is a strong emotional that makes you feel alive. I look at fear with love.

Olivia: Your girlfriend Giulia was one of the main inspirations for this book…

Lele: During this project, Giulia was always next to me and everything was in some way related to her. When the idea of the title came into my mind, I realized that I’ve been always chasing somebody in my nightmare. She is my succubus. I also like the idea of being scared with somebody else, feeling protected.

Olivia: Together with Giulia, you also directed a short movie, To Lie Under, which corresponds to the book.

Lele: Yes, everything you see on the pages of the book was also filmed. The movie To Lie Under explains the figure of the succube. The soundtrack is amazing. After we shot and edited the piece, the band No Age created the music inspired by the images.

All images courtesy of Lele Saveri

The current vogue for “ruin porn” – the sensationalized and aestheticized images of dereliction and decay – was on our minds when Salome Oggenfuss and I visited the Uranian Phalanstery on a hot and humid day last September. Salome had heard from a colleague about two decrepit old interconnected brownstones on East 4th St, between Avenue C and Avenue D occupied by hoarders who gave their disposophobia artistic and spiritual pretensions. They were set to move at the end of the month and we decided to plan a visit before they vacated the premises. We knew a bit about the Uranian Phalanstery from an online search and would soon find out more from our guide, Medhi Matin, who was living in a room on the top floor. In 1959, artist couple Richard Oviet Tyler and Dorothea Baer founded the Phalanstery in New York City while living in a still-active synagogue serving Ukrainian immigrants. When the synagogue closed in 1974 the building became the headquarters of the Uranian Phalanstery. Designed as an “anarchist utopia commune for practitioners of art and cosmology,” the name comes from the philosophy of the visionary Charles Fourier, who in the beginning of the 19th century designed the Phalanstère: a sprawling structure that would hold his own imagined utopian community. Soon the couple would buy the building next door and create the First Gnostic Lyceum of New York.

Just around the corner from the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Phalanstery and Lyceum were very active until Richard succumbed to face-cancer in 1983. During this period they hosted a Tibetan Burial Society and spiritual tattoo studio (at a time when tattooing was illegal in New York), celebrations of various solstices and equinoxes with music and dance, and a printing press for artist publications and Gnostic pamphlets – all the while envisioning the space itself as a constantly evolving artwork. From the outside there was nothing extraordinary about the Phalanstery, which looked like a normal, if shabby, building in Alphabet City. After answering the door Matin, 32, introduced us to the place and their dedication to individual and communal expression and creativity. At the time of our visit, only he and Dorothea were living there. It was only three weeks before they had to move out, after selling the buildings for over $3 million to partially pay a tax lien and relocating uptown to Hamilton Heights.

After our quick chat Matin handed us a pair of flashlights and graciously offered to let us wander around for a bit. There were no overhead lights and the electricity came from extensions chords anchored in the building next door. The piles of folk art, musical instruments, stuffed animals, tchotchkes, etc., make it tempting to think of the Tylers as so-called outsider artists, but the fact that Richard and Dorothea had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and that the former had sold works to the Museum of Modern Art, the Rockefeller collection and the Smithsonian bellies that somewhat condescending label.

We followed Matin down a dark creaking staircase into Richard’s basement studio. Entering the room, the first thing he pointed out was the bed in the corner where Tyler died. Matin said he’d show us Richard’s series of self-portraits detailing his facial deterioration but he never mentioned it again and it felt too macabre to remind him. The studio perfectly provided the context for Richard’s work, both temporally and thematically. My flashlight first fell upon newspaper clippings of mug shots from the Chinatown gang the Ghost Shadows, prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The roof of the studio was completely covered with A4 posters, Tibetian prayer flags and prints reminiscent of William Blake. Chapbooks from the Uranian Press sat on a pushcart, seemingly ready to be hauled to the market. Bookshelves lined the walls crammed with artist books, books on cosmology and assorted esoterica. FBI most wanted posters for the likes of Mark Rudd of the Weather Underground and Puerto Rican separatist William Guillermo Morales, and other members of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaction Nacional, sat besides a hand-written quote about beautiful destruction from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed. Medhi left us alone to explore and I nearly stepped in cat vomit as I looked up at a print of Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son. On one table there is a series of photos of Richard in the Pacific Front in World War II. Despite the mélange of objects and images the aesthetic felt oddly coherent.

The rest of the house, starting in the Lyceum on the ground floor of the next building that held their collection of rare musical instruments from around the world and an assortment of folk art, did not feel as unified in its aesthetic as Richard’s studio. Nothing really felt out of place in the rest of the house: not the flat-screen in the temple room, not Matin’s laptop sitting on a desk in his living quarters, not an icon of Jesus with four arms holding a hammer and sickle, nor the working kitchen.

Matin lived in a room on the third floor of the Lyceum. On the second floor landing, the walls covered by a mural, we passed the door to Dorothea’s room. It was locked and off limits during our tour. We continued up the stairs to Matin’s room. At first, walking in felt like walking into a normal East Village apartment. There was a mattress on the floor, a shelf with clothes and books, and the afternoon sun and the cross breeze made the room feel light and airy. Adjacent to his room, however, was the space that felt the most remarkable in the entire house. There was nothing in the room but an old mattress, covered with dust and rubble, sitting on a rusty iron frame. The roof is half caved in, the light fixture hanging on by a bit of wiring. Two dead monarch butterflies sat on the windowsill, the remnants of a performance. I immediately thought of one of Dorothea’s works we saw in the basement studio: the skeletons of small animals – a bird and some kind of rodent – that had simply been left to decompose. Perhaps counter-intuitively, despite being devoid of the clutter of accumulated objects, the room somehow felt like the most personal and private space in the house. It was where, via the display of the decay of the architecture and the decay of bodies, the weight of the passage of time itself bore down upon us.

Decay is intertwined with the experience of time and the philosopher Dylan Trigg claims that the philosophical value of decay is its resistance to representation and stasis. Community groups failed in getting the city to grant landmark status to this pair of brownstones to prevent their redevelopment, claiming that the buildings were built around 1840 and have been virtually unchanged since – they hadn’t even been rewired since the beginning of the 20th century. While it’s difficult not to feel as though the neighborhood lost something when the Phalanstery moved uptown, there is a sense that it is perhaps not a bad thing that it moved before becoming monumentalized as a sort of time capsule from a time where artists could actually afford two buildings in the East Village to pursue their esoteric creative goals individually and communally, as a subsequent stop for tourists visiting the nearby Tenement Museum.

Conceiving of this piece as another obituary resulting from of the wave of gentrification that has now subsumed all of Alphabet City also seems both obvious and beside the point when considering the Phalanstery. It was a time capsule, but not one that has been hermetically sealed. Richard’s studio had not been preserved so much as it was left alone. Decay also powerfully evokes the death and nothingness that awaits us all. Unlike visions of death that focus on continuity and the life that emerges in and from death – pullulating, swarming, breeding – there was a musty stillness to the Uranian Phalanstery. I asked Matin how they plan to recreate this milieu in their new building uptown. “Recreate isn’t really the right word,” he answers. “More like reassemble.” What one imagines would be impossible to transpose is the palpable sense of rot that one felt walking into the Uranian Phalanstery.

We left Matin and went out into the ridiculously humid afternoon, our clothing smelling of a combination of mildew and cat piss. Unlike the ruins in places laid waste to by deindustrialization like Detroit, which bears witness to a society squandering its resources, there is nothing tragic about the fate of the Phalanstery. Not coupled to dereliction, the structure had been allowed to decay while it was inhabited and culturally active. The Phalanstery was never intended to remain cemented in the riverbed against the flow of history or to serve as a bulwark against complete and total gentrification. For better or for worse, Alphabet City has changed drastically since Richard and Dorothea founded the Phalanstery. The Phalanstery changed as well, although at a considerably slower pace. Walking through the different levels of the house, one was exposed to not only the history of the neighborhood, but a more geological, natural history – to living ruins.

All photos by Salome Oggenfuss