Lisa Kereszi (American, born 1973)
Ball Rack, Island Bowl, Governors Island, NY
2003
Archival pigment print, flush-mounted on Dibond
30 x 37.25 in
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon, Class of 1995
Trashcan, Broadway Arcade, Times Square, NYC
2004
Archival pigment print, flush-mounted on Dibond
29.5 x 37.25 in
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon, Class of 1995
We are fortunate to hold numerous works by photographer Lisa Kereszi in our collection. I remember hanging these works as a first-year in the Visual Arts Center on campus. Years later, amidst a global pandemic, I feel these works are more pertinent now than ever.
These photographs by Kereszi were captured at numerous spots across New York City, including Times Square and Governors Island. Both Trashcan and Ball Rack are strangely quiet and still, especially for being located in The City That Never Sleeps. The juxtaposition between the hustle and bustle of New York City and these photographs, which lack such movement and people, is stark. They take me back to the images from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic where the busiest metropolitan areas across the world were photographed empty, desolate, and quiet.
With what our world has gone through this past year, it’s hard not to view art from this lens. I think that’s what makes art so important and powerful—it can bring new perspectives for viewing our surrounding environment.
Kereszi is an American photographer who received her BA from Bard College in photography and her MFA from the Yale University School of Art. Her work is held in the collections of many prominent institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Yale School of Art. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
-Emilie Hoke ‘21
