Appreciating the pinhole photography of late East Village resident Veronica Saddler

Veronica Saddler, who taught pinhole photography at Cooper Union, died in February 2020.

Thankfully, a friend rescued some of Saddler's photographs and negatives from her Fourth Street apartment, and a selection of the work is now featured at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery, 219 E. Second St. between Avenue B and Avenue C. 

Here's more about her photography from a New York Times feature in 1999: 

For most New Yorkers, Manhattan with empty streets is only a beautiful dream. But Veronica Saddler, a pinhole photographer, can clear out the city with her cameras. The two faded cardboard boxes scribbled over with exposure times could not look more unassuming, yet they have produced dozens of majestic photographs. 

For Ms. Saddler, who is smitten with Manhattan's architecture, pinhole is the ideal medium. The city is transformed into a place where buildings, not people, are the focus, and for anyone used to crammed city streets, the vast stretches of empty pavement in these photos are almost as compelling as the buildings themselves. The pinhole's infinite depth of field and wide-angle capacity have a distorting quality that causes some buildings to appear to stretch out and envelop an entire block, an effect Ms. Saddler enhances by not shooting her subjects straight on.

The New York in her photos is serene and slightly haunted: Delmonico's steakhouse is a stony battleship sailing down a deserted Beaver Street; Jefferson Market Library looks more than ever like a misplaced fairy castle, its tower oddly warped like a melting ice cream cone on an abandoned stretch of the Avenue of the Americas. An afternoon shot of Trinity Church looks as if it was taken at the dead hour of 5 a.m. 

Her work will be on display until April 3. Gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Said an EVG reader who alerted us to the show: "The exhibition is beautifully installed. It would be sad if this talented African American woman's passing went unnoticed." 

Here's a look at some of her work on display courtesy of EVG contributor Stacie Joy...

RIP Joe Overstreet

[Image via legacy.com]

Joe Overstreet, an artist who was a fixture in the East Village for decades, reportedly died of heart failure on June 4. He was 85.

To the Times:

Mr. Overstreet belonged to a generation of contemporary African-American visual artists who came of age in the civil rights era and addressed the burning political issues of the day in a wide variety of forms and styles, from overt protest work to the subtlest geometric abstraction.

He was particularly notable for removing canvases from the wall and suspending them in space, giving painting a sculptural dimension. He saw such pieces as, among other things, experiments in how to situate art and viewers in physical space.

For 40 years, Overstreet ran Kenkeleba House, a nonprofit gallery dedicated to artists of color on Second Street between Avenue B and Avenue C that he founded with his partner, Corrine Jennings.


[214 E. 2nd St., home of Kenkeleba House]

Here's more on his life via artforum:

Overstreet was born in 1933, in a primarily African American and Choctaw community in rural Mississippi. During the Great Migration, he moved around often with his family, eventually resettling in the Bay Area. In addition to studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the University of California in Berkeley, Overstreet learned from the modernist artist and advocate Sargent Johnson, who became an early mentor.

After moving to New York City in 1957, Overstreet started hanging out at Cedar Tavern, the Abstract Expressionist haunt. A participant in the Black Arts Movement, he also collaborated with Amiri Baraka as the art director for Harlem’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School. Overstreet’s work was featured in Tate Modern’s exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” in 2017.

Manhattan Sideways wrote a feature about Kenkeleba House, and was suitably impressed by the experience:

We did not realize, as we began our personal tour of the incredible collection that Overstreet and his wife Corinne Jennings have amassed over the last four decades, that this would become one of the highlights not only of our walk across 2nd Street, but perhaps one of the most memorable experiences we have had on any street.

Had we not been personally escorted through the unmarked double doors that lead to Kenkeleba Gallery, we might not ever have known it was here. The only sign on the building reads Henington Hall, etched into the stone facade along with the year it was built, 1908.

According to Overstreet, in the 70s the building was condemned until he and his wife were able to strike a deal with the city in 1978. Although 2nd Street was teeming with drug activity back then, the arrangement proved worthwhile for Overstreet, as it gave him, his wife, three children and the emerging Kenkeleba House a home in an area that eventually cleaned up its act and became one of the most important neighborhoods for the arts in New York City.

The space includes a sculpture garden that you've likely seen from Third Street...





This link has more details on the individual pieces in the garden.

Also on Second Street, you can find the Wilmer Jennings Gallery, named for Corrine Jennings' father, a well-regarded printmaker.