Activate: Market Street 7

Timothy Dingman
Curated by Jo-El Lopez
September 5th – October 10th
@85 Market Street

Timothy Dingman came to Newark nearly seven years ago to help his architect student son deal with housing and education expenses. The first things he did for Timothy were walking tours of the amazing heritage of Renaissance Revival, Romanesque and Art Deco architecture in the downtown business district. Buildings erected from the late 1800s to the mid 1900’s with “style,” with craftsmanship and consideration of the scale of the neighboring structures. Louis Sullivan would have felt at home here with his hopes for an “American” architectural model. After a year or so of trying, with varying degrees of success to photograph the architectural marvels of the City, Dingman realized that he was desperately trying to isolate his favorite subjects from more modern buildings that seemed…out of place with existing structures. This past six month’s, Timothy has been approaching architectural photography in Newark as an obfuscation. The images are of “heritage” architecture as seen as reflections in the glass facades of Gateway Center, the Panasonic building, 550 Broad St, The new Prudential building and the PSE&G building. We can’t and shouldn’t stop progress in our City but we could acknowledge our architectural heritage and remember that “new” is not always “best”…or even interesting…or not grossly simplistic and more than a little bit unimaginative.