Untold Stories

Maybe it's from being raised on Raymond Chandler novels, but I am perpetually drawn to all things steeped in noir: my bedroom is wallpapered with printouts of Crewdson, Atget, and Michael Wolff's "Transparent City." And, as of this week, with photographs from Jonathan Smith's Untold Stories, which opened last Thursday at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea, and are on display through November.


I had the chance to interview Smith for the October Pop Photo last month, not for this series but for his Bridge Project. (The article's not up online yet, but the issue is on the stands.) The Bridge Project, as Smith described it, was an archival task: rather than capturing New York City Bridges themselves, he was interested in their context, from different viewpoints in more obscure locations, as an unchanging backdrop to the city constantly in flux. They're fascinating from this perspective partly because you rarely see bridges captured in this way, but more so because of their voyeuristic component. You're conscious of the photographer traveling through the city, documenting scenes as a detached witness: such as a wedding, kids playing on a sandhill, an anonymous residential garage.

Untold Stories is more suggestive, with its cinematic stills of nightlit strangers posed in uncertain settings, an underpass, through the window of a motel. But it also includes photos that are in their way archival, city-at-night, viewed from obscure vantage points; capturing a certain aspect of New York which is, always, a city of voyeurs, whether by choice or accident.

I'm posting a few of my favorites below, but if in the city, it's far better to stop by the gallery and wander around, paint in the narrative, and fill in cracks. The gallery is located at 511 West 25th Street.