All This Useless Beauty: Photographs by Larry Racioppo
Brooklyn Public Library
September 23 - November 18, 2003
From the crumbling stone cherubs of the Bushwick Theater to the peeling plaster ghouls of Coney Island's Spookhouse, LARRY RACIOPPO's artful images remind us of Brooklyn's illustrious past. Neglected but not forgotten, these beautiful old places evoke memories, nostalgia and a sense of history. "What shall we do with all this useless beauty?" -- This quote by Elvis Costello expresses the inspiration behind this collection of provocative, rarely seen, images of Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Public Library presents All This Useless Beauty, an exhibition of over 30 large color prints (20" x 24" and 30" x 40") by veteran photographer Larry Racioppo in the Grand Lobby of the Central Library. Larry Racioppo, a Brookyn native, has been photographing New York City's people and places for more than 30 years. In this new exhibition, he captures all the fading glory of Brooklyn's grand old movie theaters, churches and amusement halls. The exhibition takes viewers on a tour of some of Brooklyn's most memorable sites including several photographs of Loews Kings Theater and Coney Island.
The vivid detail of color and texture in Larry Racioppo's large color prints reveal the striking contrast between the original vibrancy of these venues and their current dilapidation. They leave us with a haunting sense of the many pleasurable experiences that thousands of people had passing through, or by, these sites. In a photograph of the Loews Kings Theater, we look onto a balcony with rows of plush crimson seats beneath a still beautiful chandelier and an exquisite mural of an 18th century grand lady – now covered with plaster dust and peeling paint. A photograph of the Coney Island Spookhouse presents the striking image of a looming red macabre mask and the darkened doorway within it amidst the refuse of an abandoned building.
The power and beauty of these sites still touch us. We smile at a photograph of the Coney Island Playhouse and the raucous cartoon characters painted on the walls – a couple playing cards, the woman left with only a barrel to wear after revealing a bad hand, and a set of 'betty boop' females who cavort across the wall in their heels and ponytails kicking up dust in their chase. Larry Racioppo asks us to look at this beauty now. After having spent years photographing New York and Brooklyn, he offers this carefully selected collection of images.
"I've been lucky. While driving around Brooklyn since the mid-1990s, I have chanced upon incredibly beautiful buildings and structures, many of which were closed and sealed, often abandoned. They beckoned to me and I responded by taking their pictures," says Larry Racioppo. "Once grand churches, movie theaters and amusements now stand forlorn, their beauty compromised by the ravages of time and the elements. Many have outlined their usefulness and await demolition as the city reinvents itself. Some are still economically viable and have been transformed into bingo parlors and car repair shops, while others teeter on the edge of extinction. What connects them is their inexorable beauty."I want to photograph everything – the exposed bones of a structure, the fragment of a carved stone pediment, the faded detail of a mural in a movie theater lobby, the broken cherubs on a building's façade – before it disappears."
Larry Racioppo's photographs have been widely exhibited and collected. His work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society and The New York Public Library. A Brooklyn native, he has been a staff photographer for the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development since 1989. He has a Master's degree in Television and Radio Production from Brooklyn College and a B.A. in Communications from Fordham University.
This body of work has been made possible by the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
"This exhibition is dedicated to The Captain Ron Hellgren, who long ago let me use his cool Nikkor lenses while we photographed in Coney Island; to Rob Gurbo and John Rossi, who know the Boardwalk and the back room at Nathan's; and to my wife, Barbara, who makes the present better than the past." – Larry Racioppo
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org
