Cityscape 3rd place winner

In my recent project on Red Hook, I find a post industrial part of the city where the story is in the quiet details. I see what’s left of its industrial past. I find empty lots and imagine what might have been. I hear the cheers of children behind fenced off, wildly overgrown playing fields. I see the beauty, often delicacy, of strewn trash juxtaposed on modern urban construction, and art on fences beautifying decaying walls and ancient factories. Then, there is the looming Gowanus Expressway. If you look, you can find it almost everywhere.

In my photography, I am interested in discovering beauty away from traditional aesthetics. I try not to embellish or glorify what I see.. The geometry in my visual field guides my eye. I find cubist structures of the industrial revolution. Building and destruction; we are left with the cube, the block, the foundation.

In my pictures the vertical line replaces what is missing in this neighborhood. The tall buildings and the trees have all been stripped from the environment. Where is the strength and dignity in this neighborhood? We see them in gates and lamp posts and the fences.

Lisa Cutler is a New York-based photographer whose practice spans landscape, portraiture and street photography . Lisa turned to photography after a successful career as a television producer and director and then raising a family.
Lisa’s most notable recent project is a series of photographs that explore the urban landscape of Red Hook, Brooklyn. Lisa’s Red Hook series has recently received much acclaim and recognition. Red Hook was completed in 2019 and has gone on to be recognized by a number of awards. Red Hook was selected by The Los Angeles Center of Photography for its Project 2020 Exhibition and subsequently featured in Lenscratch and in Dodho Magazine. Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2020 named Red Hook as a Top 200 finalist. It also received an Honorable Mention at the Le Prix de la Photographie de Paris (2019).Red Hook also won the 2020 15th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers in non-professional cityscapes. Eight images from her Red Hook series were exhibited at the 6th Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography in Barcelona 2021. Red Hook was also named a finalist in the KLOMPCHING GALLERY Fresh 2020 exhibit.

Lisa's new series, Hidden Homes premiered at Foley Gallery in 2021.