Photographer Shows View Of Queens

By ROSS BARKAN

Examples of Audrey Gottlieb’s work on display at the Queens Botanical Gardens, “Bridesmaids In Green Satin.”

As a borough of startling diversity and contradiction, Queens can be a playground for an artist with an especially astute eye. Dozens of nationalities may share a single square mile. New urban megaliths will cast their shadows on the edge of verdant and mesmerizing parkland. For photographer Audrey Gottlieb, Queens was always the perfect place to aim her camera.

“I was drawn by light reflecting off the East River,” said Gottlieb, of Queens, from her new bucolic home in Maine.

Queens is never far from her mind, and her vision will now be known to everyone who visits the Queens Botanical Garden’s new photography exhibit, “Vignettes from the Queens Project.” Gottlieb’s series of photographs of Queens, taken from the early 1990s onward, are meant to represent the diversity of the borough in all its color, energy, and exuberance.

The 25-piece exhibit’s spiritual beginning came when Gottlieb, then living on Roosevelt Island, wandered across the bridge into Long Island City. She was working at the United Nations as a photographer - in 1993 she was flown to Somalia to take photos during a time when the country was embroiled in a violent showdown with the United States.

She had also never walked around in Queens. As a freelance photographer, she soon became acquainted with the borough, taking pictures of all the people, edifices, and events she could.

“Queens had been a place where I didn’t go until I started exploring it, it was on the fringe,” she said. “I think that’s what I’ve always done, exploring places by foot or with my camera. I have a natural curiosity about the world.”

Queen’s architecture first transfixed Gottlieb. She could “see that there was an infrastructure that supported the big city in Manhattan.” This was a place where people lived, loved, and worshiped, and did not merely pile into office buildings. While she enjoyed her work with the U.N., she cherished the time spent outside of a sleek, impersonal tower. She took a leave of absence, studying photography and graphic art for a year. Afterwards, she threw herself into photography, working with the Queens Council on the Arts. A big break came with a 1991 exhibit at the Queens Historical Society. Some of the same images from that exhibit are in “Vignettes from the Queens Project.” She would return to the U.N., but her artistic career was in motion.

One photograph in the exhibit of several muscle-bound men straining to lift a two-ton structure illustrates the type of tension and precision that Gottlieb looks for as a photographer. The men are participating in a traditional Italian festival that celebrates the life of a saint who saved people from a shipwreck off Naples. Gottlieb’s photograph depicts the Long Island City men straining to lift a massive structure called a giglio—there’s a 14-piece band and a singer on the giglio’s platform, not pictured.

“It symbolizes the saving of the people in the shipwreck, and also martyrdom. One person has the honor of standing in front of them with a baton, calling in Italian to lift the platform. He will tell them when to lift and drop it, which they have to be very careful about doing. I like that—it’s such precision, they have to have their hearts, bodies, and souls involved in it.”

After more than 20 years in Queens, Gottlieb has moved to Maine, a little bit north of Northern Boulevard. She enjoys the serene life, but does miss the bustle of the borough that first inspired her.

“There are common threads that run through all these different cultures, festivals processions, and food celebrations,” she said. “I think there’s an authenticity about Queens that I never experienced in Manhattan.”

On May 19, Gottlieb will be coming down from Maine to close the exhibit and give an artist’s talk about the Botanical Garden. If you want to see more of her work, check out www.audrey-gottlieb.com.

Reach Reporter Ross Barkan at rbarkan@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127.