Brooklyn-based photographer Elle Pérez is putting their work front and center at 100 bus stops all across the city.
The 16-piece series from sun to sun" launched on Tuesday in 13 neighborhoods citywide, including Bedford Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg.
With "from sun to sun," the gender non-conforming artist visualizes the daily rhythm of New York communities and places that they grew up with. Pérez has held solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and 47 Canal. Currently, their work is included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art and Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall at the Brooklyn Museum.
In their newest exhibit, Pérez puts the lens on friends and their impact on their communities, topics of identity and heritage, and facets of NYC's urban landscape.
In one photograph, a student and an outdoor education teacher are shown planting evergreen shrubs and raspberries in the garden of their public school in the Bronx. A sequence of hand gestures in one series of black and white images illustrates the steps for the Flight, a handshake popular in the punk scene of the Bronx that their friend Jay P. Fury created. Pérez has deliberately chosen to present imagery of Puerto Rico's national flag in black and white as a sign of mourning and resistance towards the U.S. government-imposed oversight board.
Pérez photos highlight familiar details that may typically go unnoticed such as crevices in the street pavement, entangled bicycles and worn subway car interiors, thereby drawing attention to the subtle histories woven into the city's fabric. The exhibit provides an opportunity for the viewer to reflect on how these different spaces can hold traces of people and offer a different kind of historical record.
"from sun to sun" was commissioned by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with advertising firm JCDecaux. Pérez' sixteen photographs repeat six to seven times each across one hundred bus shelters' display controlled by JCDecaux and will be grouped in clusters to give the public an opportunity to see multiple pieces within walking distance.
"from sun to sun" will be on view through November 24.
