01 Sep 2010

Stephen Mallon at Front Room gallery

The Front Room gallery is proud to present 'Next Stop Atlantic,' an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon. In his second solo exhibition at the gallery Mallon presents a stunning series of photographs, which capture the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway cars to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

In a bold move, the NYC Transit authority joined the artificial reef building program off the East Coast of the US in 2000 and sent stripped and decontaminated subway cars off on barges to be dropped into the Ocean in order to build refuge for many species of fish and crustaceans which would colonize the structures.

Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of sunshine streams through their removed doors as they wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths of the ocean floor.

Mallon's photographs elicit both the sadness and the beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time. Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC Transit's involvement in this program. The photographs that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the water.

These newly released photographs are from Mallon's continuing series; 'American Reclamation' which chronicles and examines recycling processes in the U.S. This series holds optimism in the innovation of salvaging techniques, showing the possible gains that can be made as industrial waste is revivified. In 'Next Stop Atlantic' Mallon determinedly tracks the final stage of the lives of these, once indispensable modes of transit for passengers on the New York subway lines, canonizing them in New York history.

Most recently, Mallon gained much acclaim with his striking 'Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549,' a series of photographs documenting the salvaging of the US Airway flight that, amazingly, airline captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger had managed to safely emergency-land in the Hudson River in on January 15, 2009. The images Mallon produced during the two-week effort by maritime contractor Weeks Marine have since been exhibited in New York and featured in numerous publications and media including: New York magazine, Vanity Fair, NBC, CBS, Resource Magazine and Wired. In the summer of 2010, 'Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549' will be exhibited at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.