Passage: The Memory Palace by Hugh Crawford
December 13, 2012 – February 28, 2013
Central Library, Grand Lobby
A site-specific photographic mural that addresses issues of transition and change both at Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and the borough of Brooklyn. The mural combines items from BPL’s collections, ephemera, and other mementos from the library’s past with the library’s latest technological offerings.
A passage is many things. It is an architectural space, a movement from one place to another, a journey by air or by sea; the process of time elapsing; and, of course, it is a segment of a written work.
The public library is in transition. Once a repository for books, it is now a community center, a technological hub, and a portal for global research. Brooklyn has also seen great change in the past decades. There has been expansion and reinvention in many of the neighborhoods surrounding the Library.
For the passageway between the old library lobby and the new, I envision a photographic mural that will contain images of the library and Brooklyn, past and present. It will be a project regarding memory, books, libraries, Coney Island, Brooklyn, severe weather, the old and the new, the old future, the new future, Apollo and Laocoön; an opportunity to look back and forward at the same time.
Hugh Crawford is a native Californian with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts, School of Art and Design. Crawford works as a commercial and fine art photographer for clients like Deutsch Bank, The Brooklyn Paper, and Twentieth Century Fox, among others. Some of his photographs have been published in magazines, including Rolling Stone and New York Magazine, and Crawford has had solo and group exhibitions in Brooklyn, Manhattan and San Francisco, California. Crawford draws inspiration from artists like Jackson Pollock, Diane Arbus, and Richard Avedon.
Website: hughcrawford.com
http://hughcrawford.com/memory-palace/