Negotiations: Alternative vs. Mainstream

In the 1970s, the split between the alternative and the mainstream art scene was often thought of in terms of downtown vs. uptown. Downtown was everything below 14th Street, and we now think of “downtown” artists as anti-establishment and anti-commercial. Much of the current interest and recent research into New York's alternative spaces of the 1970s has overlapped with this Downtown scene. Alternative photography galleries have not figured prominently into this history, in part because it has placed emphasis on artists who were breaking down barriers between media or using photography to directly criticize mainstream institutions, rather than on those photographers who simply sought to show their work.

Of course, not all of the new spaces were downtown or pointedly “alternative.” In fact, some of the alternative spaces were modeled after commercial galleries and differed only in the content of the work that was shown. Although only a handful of galleries exhibited photography in 1970, an article in The New York Times in 1980 listed at least 20 galleries that actively solicited the work of new photographers. Only two years later, in the same paper, the critic Andy Grundberg wrote that photography had become such an integral part of the contemporary art scene that “the segregated photography marketplace seems to be withering.” Given photography’s trajectory, the Midtown Y Gallery was in a complicated position by the early 1980s, finding itself in a suddenly crowded field. In response, the gallery continued to represent emerging photographers, but adopted a more conventional exhibition program.

The exhibition Three Photographers, which typified the Midtown Y’s program after 1982 (three emerging photographers showing distinct bodies of work), is a case in point. The photos of Marilyn Hillman, and even Wayne Levin, might not have been out of place in a downtown gallery, inasmuch as they explored modern identity and public space. Russell Munson, a talented aerial photographer known for illustrating the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull, had difficulty finding gallery representation elsewhere. In its ability to find a middle ground for such photographers, the Midtown Y Gallery was appropriately named, not only because of its location, but also because it might be thought to have a “midtown” aesthetic, at the crossroads between the uptown establishment and the downtown avant-garde.

Marilyn Hillman
Untitled, 1983
Included in the exhibition Three Photographers, January 6–January 30, 1983

From the exhibition press release dated January 1983:
Marilyn Hillman’s work consists of a series of photographs shot at relatively slow shutter speeds. As a result, the urban inhabitants in these photographs appear to have elongated gestures. These gestures juxtaposed against the city’s towering buildings, which act as backdrops, create bold images that reflect the turbulent essence of city life. This is Marilyn Hillman’s debut show.

 

Wayne Levin (b. 1945)
Untitled
Included in the exhibition Three Photographers, January 6–January 30, 1983

From the exhibition press release dated January 1983:
Wayne Levin’s photographs are of the city landscape. He often utilizes the transparency and reflective qualities of windows to create a layering effect that results in more than one environment. Other photographs are concerned with interiors of museums and public spaces as they appear adjacent to the real or outside world in a way that creates unusual but ironic relationships.

 

Russell Munson (b. 1938)
Untitled
Included in the exhibition Three Photographers, January 6–January 30, 1983

From the exhibition press release dated January 1983:

Russell Munson’s work is a series of aerial photographs. He began taking these pictures soon after receiving his pilot’s license in 1962. Most of the photographs are at a low altitude of 500 feet. The perspective at this height gives his images both an abstract and, at the same time, surreal quality.

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