Anders Goldfarb: Passed Remains: Williamsburg/Greenpoint 1987 - 2007

In 1986 when Anders Goldfarb (b. 1954 in Brooklyn, lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY) moved to Greenpoint, he was a young photographer with a master of fine arts degree from State University of New York at New Paltz. In moving to Williamsburg, he joined a growing number of young artists seeking the low rents of what was then a declining neighborhood of light industrial buildings and working-class residences. Working with black and white film, and a medium format Rolleiflex camera, Goldfarb began photographing in 1987 in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, riding his bike around the area and looking for the peculiar beauty of sidings, peeling paint, and razor wire. Goldfarb’s photographs provide a valuable historical record of these neighborhoods prior to their demolition and gentrification. His subjects are metaphors for loss and vulnerability and distill moments in time that are destined for demise.

Bonnie Yochelson is an art historian and curator specializing in photography. She has written numerous books about New York photographers, organized exhibitions at art museums, history museums and commercial and non-profit galleries, and was on the faculty of the MFA Department of Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts from 1988 to 2017.