I am enamored with and intrigued by these photos taken over a period of 30 years by New York-based Chilean photographer Camilo Jose Vergara. NY Times profiled him today, along with this slide show, which featured a tiny sampling of the presumably thousands of photos of the same Harlem locations and structures, whose documented evolution alongside a culture of evolving people, is extremely powerful when viewed as a time lapse series.The article mentions Vergara has published several photo books documenting various urban landscapes and their transformations over a period of time, which the "scholars" at Publisher's Weekly refer to as the "destitution and vulgarities of urban decay." Not sure how I feel about that statement. Moving on... Below are some more of his photos:
It's not even that Vergara's photos are all that mind blowing. The thing that I admire about him is that he has made it his life's work to document urban areas and create a timetable of photographic evidence of each urban microcosm's residents and culture. More of us need to have that kind of dedication.Here's an interesting article written by Vergara for Slate.
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