Rox, a new gallery on Delancey Street that arrived last month in the Sol Moscot building, is getting ready to open a new show featuring model/muse Natalie White. The show, Who Shot Natalie White features images of White by notorious photographers like Spencer Tunik, Olivier Zahm and many more. We stopped by while founder and artist Emerald Fitzgerald was hanging the show. Fitzgerald gave us a tour of the renovated space, which used to be a clothing and 99 cent store. She hopes to expand to the space next door, which has been the Moscot Eyewear flagship for almost a century (Moscot was bought out and is moving across the street).
We were surprised to find the subject, herself, taking break with photographer Max Snow. Natalie briefly flashed her famous “assets” for some friends on the sidewalk. The guys doing construction next door didn’t seem to notice. What would Sol have thought?
Really stupid hipster stuff! So this is what the LES is becoming: Gentrification on speed! No longer will this be a neighborhood with residents but rather a corridor of galleries, bars, interstate curb-side buses, and hotels. Most people visiting these venues are outsiders. How sad :(
I actually walked by this place yesterday not knowing what was going on and i found it rather vulgar and distasteful to hang such a large, nude (or semi-nude) poster at eye-level in the store window on such a busy street. This is the still the LES with families and children living in the neighborhood, not the red light district. At least have some respect for the neighborhood…
Could not agree more! They have no taste nor sensitivity to the neighborhood. They should take their sensationalist crap elsewhere. Maybe people could organize a protest right outside this porno peek-show.
How awful that they’re already planning to expand into the next door space!
It’s art, get used to it. Woman can walk about topless, it’s legal. These seem tasteful. Spencer Tunic is a long-time LES’er.
After the gun deaths here, the title alone is lousy…playing at other people’s tragedies…opportunistic and hackneyed at the same time?
The large full-frontal nude torso image is quite distasteful to have on display to the street. I get the “it’s art” argument inside the gallery, but broadcast to innocent passers-by like that, it crosses the line.
Is there a better place to register displeasure than the Lo-Down comments section? I’m afraid to click the gallery link for their contact info on a public computer right now.
Clearly they were looking for controversy and I guess they got it.
I would have preferred a gallery spotlighting the daily caravan of
women who used to trek through Delancey Street to their homes in Brooklyn after a 12-hour shift at a SOHO sweatshop — carrying back-breaking loads of garments on their shoulders in order to continue
sewing into the night to meet quotas.
But I guess those women of a century ago broke their backs to give a woman like this the opportunity to be self centered, vile and clueless. Congrats?
A naked human body – the horror! What will I tell my children?! Everyone complains that New York got too sterile and when stuff like this pops up people still get their panties in a bunch.
Did the same critics boo Maria Abromovitch at moma for naked people? No. Granted it was not on the street.
I was more offended by those posters around the neighborhood with the women showing off their mastectomy scars and naked breasts. I know it’s for a good cause, but I still don’t need to see graphic images while strolling around my neighborhood when I’m not looking for an art show.
I dropped in today with my dog, who was not offended. But I could see a mom being offended if she had to walk past with her young kids. Our neighborhood is filled with people of differing cultural attitudes about nudity, and these photos are sexually provocative and pretty raunchy for some members of our neighborhood. Maybe Natalie should lighten up a bit and move her photos out of the front window, a compromise that would take into account the different family values of all the neighbors in the area. Good neighbors may not agree with the beliefs of all the people they live among, but they respect them. I understand her goal is shock value to generate PR, but another goal should be to honor the different neighbors we share our space with. Just sayin…..