James Nares: Street

Originally produced in 2011 to be projected nightly on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s south-facing wall in Central Park and marking the first time the Museum had projected a work of art onto its exterior, James Nares’ mesmerizing Street enthralled audiences. It also marked a time of transition in New York, the subject on which it meditates for a single, intentional, hypnotic hour.

The sixty-one-minute video, filmed in New York City in September 2011 as a love letter to British-born Nares’ adoptive home, Street slows the clamor of the city to spellbinding effect. Nares recorded sixteen hours of footage from a moving car using an enormous high-speed camera, and then greatly slowed the source material, editing down the results to one hour of steady, continuous motion and scoring it with music for a twelve-string guitar, composed and performed by the artist’s friend Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth.

In retrospect, Nares’ languid meditation is not only a tribute to the bustling metropolis. It is also a homage to the history of street photography while offering a restorative respite from the eerie quiet caused by the impact of the global pandemic in cities across America and all over the world. As viewers encounter the video of New York City’s streets and its people, they are offered a moving reminder of the fabric of life that make cities everywhere so unique and a hope for a return to their vital energy.

Curator: Michael Goodson