Rothstein’s Hardware

I photographed Rothstein's Hardware Store when I moved to New York in 2011, up until the business's closure. The hardware store was my great grandfather’s business decades ago when settling in the United States. This was some attempt to understand my relationship to this storefront as I never knew my great grandfather or had any direct connection to this place. When I found out that the building was sold and slated to be demolished to make way for a luxury condo building— I felt so anxious. How would I recognize this loss? Once the storefront was shuttered I cut down the 6 foot banner that hung in front of the business for decades.

I realized that this fixation on monumentalizing my loss with the store’s closure was not about a good photograph, but rather –every photograph- I had taken. From this realization, I created a block of around 80 photographs that I took in a single day as I walked through the store, after I found out the building would be demolished.

I printed this bombardment of images on newsprint. With this newsprint poster I was interested in the material as one aligned with newspapers, which presents information shaped by an assumption of factuality and immediacy. I have periodically publicly offered this artifact, presented as an out of date newspaper, on Clinton street throughout the building's demolition process. I have assumed this role and plan to continue to until I run out of the 1,000 posters I printed.