2010.30.1.1
untitled from the Portfolio: "Gutters"
Artist
Joseph Dankowski (Joseph Stanley Dankowski)
(Camden, New Jersey, 9/1/1932 - 11/5/2010, Brewer, Maine)
Title
untitled from the Portfolio: "Gutters"
Creation Date
1969-1971
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
11 in. x 14 in. (27.94 cm x 35.56 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
embossed on board
Credit Line
Gift of the Artist and Arthur and Louise Glickman
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2010.30.1.1
Joseph Dankowski’s portfolio “Manholes and Gutters” was included in Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art in 1978. According to curator John Szarkowski, this groundbreaking exhibition questioned photography’s validity as “a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world.” Gutters and manholes, as markers that distinguish between various levels of public space, whether subterranean or pedestrian, are also surfaces worn down by the life of a city: its traffic, its inhabitants, its weather. The downward gaze of Dankowski’s camera responds to the depressed social and economic climate of New York City at this time but finds in its unusual subjects an often overlooked beauty.