Nathan Kensinger Photography: Abandoned Brooklyn

In January, 2009, the UnionDocs Gallery curated an exhibit of my photographs titled Abandoned Brooklyn. The photos explored the industrial neighborhoods of Brooklyn, visiting an abandoned airport, deserted train stations and empty powerhouses, and documented a transitional moment in Brooklyn’s history, as it moves from its industrial past towards a future that seems to be dominated by luxury apartment buildings and chain stores.

The opening of Abandoned Brooklyn kicked off a new season of the UnionDocs Documentary Bodega screening series. As part of the opening night, there was a screening of my film Covered Tracks - a short documentary about an abandoned homeless city underneath Manhattan. Also screening was a short documentary about my photographs, directed by Joe Pacheco for the series Caught in the Act: Art in Brooklyn.

Abandoned Brooklyn was featured in a slideshow and interview on Gothamist, which described the work as "accessing areas that normal folks don't usually see." The Greenpoint Gazette agreed, saying the "works intrigue not only for their aesthetic beauty—the beauty of ruin, of decay, of the sad passing of time—but because like the photographs of Jacob Riis, they show us a world we would otherwise never see, a world left behind by the quick waves of gentrification." Brooklyn author Richard Grayson wrote in particular about "a gorgeous photo of an abandoned hangar from Floyd Bennett Field" that evoked memories his childhood, when the airfield was still in use.