Murals and Neighbors: Philip Pocock’s Images of 1970s Lower East Side [PHOTOS]
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The Shadow on Avenue B (1980), Photo: Philip Pocock
Philip Pocock is a Canadian-born artist and photographer who spent the early eighties capturing the underbelly of the Lower East Side. But specifically the murals that adorned the bombed-out walls of the neighborhood. His photobook The Obvious Illusion: Murals from the Lower East Side, published in 1980, offers a glimpse of this expressive grassroots art and the community that welcomed it.
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Rivington St. (1979), Photo: Philip Pocock
Here is part of the introduction, as penned by the late art historian and critic Gregory Battcock:
A disposable culture will, in time, be disposed. The built-in temporary nature of American urban environments continues to insure perpetual decline marking a cultural sensibility devoid of conscience or concern. The murals of the Lower East Side represent, in their way, a desperate and deeply human attempt to come to terms with an urban policy and urban reality that defines and rejects human consideration. The efforts of the artists are all the more brave in that they are doomed.
Pocock contacted us this week to share some of his images from that time, as well as this early documentary (taped 1984-5) he had produced about these neighborhood murals.
Below are more of our favorite shots:
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