“New York City Underground” on Display in Romano Gallery

Blair Academy’s Romano Gallery opens for the 2010-11 school year with a multi-media exhibit by photographer Jim Rimi. His collection of photographs will be on display from September 1-October 2. An artist’s reception was held on September 16. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. till 6 p.m.; admission to the gallery is free and open to the public. For more information, call (908) 362-6121, ext. 0.

Rimi’s work entails a multi-media event including original recordings of street musicians and interviews of people photographed. All photographs were taken between 1983 and 1994 in homeless shelters and the subway systems of New York City. Copies of his book, New York City Underground, will be on sale; a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Salvation Army to help restore the lives of men, women and children in New York City.

Rimi bought his first camera at the age of 16, and uses his work “as a tool to help people.” In describing his work for New York City Underground, he said, “You’re walking in a city and you see a homeless person, or a person who is just walking down the street, talking to themselves, that sort of thing,” Rimi said. “Most people’s first reaction is to turn away, but what I wanted to do is to photograph that person so that you have to look at them, and you’re looking at this person in a way that you never would have before, because you usually walk by them and they’re invisible.” The project originally began in the early 1980s, Rimi said, and soon expanded from its original designs to something much more.

“I started photographing most of these people in shelters, and I went from there to photographing homeless on the street and in the subways and then street musicians, and it became pretty much a documentary project on these people,” he said. “I had some interviews with them and a lot of these people were famous people or writers or doctors or lawyers and due to some circumstances, wound up homeless. It could have been a nervous breakdown or drugs or alcohol, and I guess the premise of the whole thing is that we all start out at a certain place, and through life’s experiences, depending on how you handle things and which road you take, you can wind up in this situation. It’s a split second, you know?” “I also feel that by people seeing this [show], it will affect a certain amount of people and could possibly turn them away from this road (to homelessness),” he said. “And that’s what this is really about.”

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Updated 9/17/2010

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