ABOVE AND BELOW THE PAVEMENT
As part of its ongoing commitment to showcase the fine art of
photography and promote the work of photojournalists worldwide,
a21 partnered with The Half King. Previously on
display was Above and Below the Pavement, a selection of
work by Serge J-F. Levy documenting New York City street life.
Serge Levy was born in 1973 and grew up in New York City. His
studies in Sociology (at Vassar College) combined with a general
love and self-taught knowledge of art, led him into
photojournalism. Levy began his career as a freelance photographer
for the Poughkeepsie Journal. He then joined the staff of a
weekly New Jersey newspaper, where he won eight state awards
honoring his photo-essays and news photographs in the first five
months of employment. Soon thereafter Levy returned to New York and
to freelancing, this time for the Associated Press, The Daily
News, The Wall Street Journal and other national papers. He
currently shoots a variety of editorial assignments, as well as
commercial work and industrial photography for advertising agencies
and production companies.
Levy’s primary interest is in telling stories through extensive
documentary essays. His first major publication was a six-page
spread in Life magazine about Christian hardcore and punk music.
This story, about musical bands whose instrumentation sounds like
the anarchy of the “Sex Pistols,” or “Bad Brains” but whose words
preach about God, salvation and good Christian ethics, was also
shown in The Independent-Saturday Magazine Section in London. Levy
has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Stern
(Germany), Sports Illustrated, People, Marie Claire (Italy
and Greece), Harper’s, Mother Jones, ESPN The Magazine, US News
& World Report (as well as many others) and has work in several
art collections including the Buhl Collection in New York City and
The Museum of the City of New York. Recently, he was awarded a
$25,000 artist fellowship, which allowed him to do much of the
photography exhibited here. Serge is currently represented by
Matrix, a small agency of outstanding photojournalist based in New
York City.
Though news based photojournalism marked his beginnings, Levy has
extended the scope of his work well beyond simple reportage. The
images shown in this exhibition document not only what lies within
and throughout the city landscape; they are windows into the
heart’s of his subjects and the photographer’s own life; what it
is, what it isn’t and what he wants it to be.
In the Big Apple, city of steepled skyscrapers and hip-hop white
noise, Serge Levy’s lens is searingly trained on the real urban
beat, the base line of it all: New Yorkers. Black. White. Rich.
Poor. Be they euphoric, devastated, numbed out or in love. The
provocatively rich, vastly diverse humanity that lies at the heart
of the city is in these images. Within the graffiti scratched
windows of the subway, upon the gum-spotted, glass glittered
streets of Times Square and SoHo, Serge portrays the range of human
experience found above and below ground of the city that never
sleeps. Profoundly personal and deeply empathic, these sharply
grasped images are at once love letter, social commentary, journal
entry and declaration of self as Levy reveals the beautiful complex
blueprint of every day survival found in the faces, gestures and
fleeting moments of New Yorker’s lives.
Above and Below the Pavement will be on display
through July 14, 2002.
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