Please join us for the exhibition opening of Sea Level: Five Boroughs at Water’s Edge, and a conversation with author and curator Robert Sullivan, and photographer Elizabeth Felicella. The two will engage in a wide-ranging discussion on the collaborative panorama exploring the past and future of New York City’s expansive waterfront.
Like the government-sponsored U.S. coastal surveys of the nineteenth century, Sea Level is a water’s-eye view of New York – the city documented by photographer Elizabeth Felicella from its tidal edge. The panorama begins at Fort Wadsworth, which has, since the Revolutionary War, guarded the city and the Upper Bay of New York Harbor from the most eastern tip of Staten Island, the Verrazano Narrows. It bends 25 miles north, to Fort Totten, another ancient strategic post that stands at the place where the East River ends and Long Island Harbor begins. Along this trajectory through the East River, the viewer will see a shore of every borough, along with the raw geography, history, and built development that mark and characterize it. Large photographic collages will explore the construction of the panorama itself. Essays by author Robert Sullivan explore the deep history of the waterfront that is captured by Felicella’s contemporary photography.
