I saw the Philip Lorca diCorcia exhibit yesterday at the Tramp gallery in Chinatown.
I became familiar with diCorcia’s work in photography after living for several years at 80 Elizabeth Street in Hartford, Connecticut, a modern house built in 1951 and designed by diCorcia’s father, Philip Joseph diCorcia.
I’ve seen several of the photographs Tramps included in the exhibit in diCorcia’s books, and in MoMA’s online collection of diCorcia’s work. The two Mario photographs on diCorcia’s MoMA page were taken inside 80 Elizabeth Street.
This was the first time I viewed diCorcia’s work in person. His unique photographs and extraordinary eye for detail tell powerful and often moving stories.
This was also my first time visiting Tramps at 75 East Broadway. It’s an interesting space, for sure.
The gallery is on the second floor of a small Chinatown shopping mall located directly under the Manhattan Bridge.
There are several shops on the main level. A food store and outdoor fruit and vegetable market are located in the back of the first floor.
The gallery is entered by taking the stairs or elevator to the second floor where there are a couple more shops and where Tramps has taken over many of the relatively small spaces.
The second floor spaces were clearly designed for office or retail use. Some of the spaces are empty and some are in need of maintenance and repair.
But the converted retail shops work beautifully as exhibition spaces and the diCorcia exhibit showed well in these areas.
There’s been a bit of a public dust-up pertaining to the appropriateness of using this Chinatown shopping location as an art gallery.
I’m a fan of how Tramps has transformed a good part of what appears to be difficult to rent spaces into a gallery. It’s a very unique space in a building I enjoyed visiting.
I took these pictures yesterday. The upper image shows the exterior of 75 East Broadway. Tramps is on the second floor of this Chinatown retail mall. The bottom three images give a glimpse of some of the converted retail spaces used by Tramps during the diCorcia exhibition.
The diCorcia exhibit closes this coming Sunday, on April 14th. – Russ DeVeau