Ghosts of America

For those who enjoy looking at photography - especially powerful documentary photography - you should check out The Photomedia Center's current exhibit, "Yuri Marder: Ellis Island."

I'm not being completely objective here. My partner runs The Photomedia Center. But the site's stuff consistently blows me away. If Ellis Island isn't your thing, then perhaps check out Teresa Franks' "The Language of Flowers," which features photography of flowers like I guarantee you've never seen before. Bryan Oglesbee's Water Series is also something to behold.

Anyway, getting back to the Ellis Island exhibit...here's what the artist, Yuri Marder, had to say about the work:

"From the 1920s through the 1940s, bits and pieces of my family sailed into New York harbor escaping persecution and war in Europe, passing through a bewildering bureaucratic maze called Ellis Island. There were so many torments there, so many injustices and forgotten tragedies. Yet their successful passage through turned Ellis Island into a hopeful metaphor for my family, as it did for many millions of other new Americans...

In response I have imagined a place where the decaying present intertwines with the living past, a place where rooms are haunted with flashes of American history. Ghosts of our collective memory wander through a vast crumbling complex filled with fantasies of lives never realized, empires built, and untold tragedies – they live in the walls, gathering dust on cracked concrete floors."

So check it out! If you know any rich art collectors, tell them, too. Papa needs a new bedroom set...j/k.