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ARTISAN LECTURE SERIES
SPRING 2014Photographer, Christopher Payne
Author of North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City
Friday, May 16, 2014 AT THE GENERAL SOCIETY LIBRARY
LECTURE STARTS AT 6:30 P.M. - RECEPTION & BOOK SIGNING TO FOLLOW
20 WEST 44th (BETWEEN 5th AND 6th AVENUES), MANHATTANAdvance registration is recommended.
Free admission
To register, please contact the General Society at: 212.840.1840, ext 2or e-mail: [email protected] • www.generalsociety.org
THE GENERAL SOCIETY OF MECHANICS & TRADESMENOF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Founded 1785
Photographer Christopher Payne specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. His recently published book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, explores an uninhabited island of ruins in the East River. Mr. Payne’s photographs invoke the former grandeur of the site over di�erent seasons, capturing hints of buried streets and infrastructure now reclaimed by nature, while also offering a unique glimpse into a city’s future without people. Accompanying the photographs is an essay by Robert Sullivan (author of Meadowlands, Rats, and My American Revolution) and a history of the island by Randall Mason, Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trained as an architect, Mr. Payne is fascinated by how things are purposefully designed and constructed, and how they work. His first book, New York’s Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind the Subway, o�ered dramatic, rare views of the behemoth machines that are hidden behind modest facades in New York City. His second book, Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, was the result of a seven-year survey of America’s vast and largely shuttered state mental institutions, and includes an essay by the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks. For more information please visit www.chrispaynephoto.com.
