There’s a fascinating exhibition currently at City Lore, Concrete Chronicles: Lower East Side Photos by Martha Cooper and Clayton Patterson. We’re excited to announce that Cooper and Patterson, two of the most influential visual historians of downtown culture, will be in conversation with our own Traven Rice for a special live recording of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. We hope you will join us!
The event takes place January 20 at 6:30 p.m. at City Lore, 56 East 1st Street.
More about the exhibition, which runs through February 1:
…the show gathers iconic and rarely seen images spanning the late 1970s through the 2000s, capturing the grit, creativity, and community resilience of the Lower East Side. Widely celebrated for their deep engagement with the city’s streets and subcultures, Martha Cooper and Clayton Patterson have each shaped how the world sees New York. Through distinct yet complementary perspectives, Cooper and Patterson, together with his partner, Elsa Rensaa, have dedicated their lives to recording the human stories that animate the city’s streets. Their photographs capture a neighborhood that became a global symbol of artistic resistance and grassroots resilience. Cooper’s attentive, human-centered images of youth culture, street art, hip-hop, cultural traditions, and neighborhood life stand as enduring records of ingenuity and play. Patterson’s raw, uncompromising documentation of activism, underground art, and the everyday drama of tenement blocks offers a counter-archive to official histories. Together, their perspectives reveal the LES as a crucible of both community-preservation and innovation at the frontlines of urban change.
The event is free. For more information and to reserve your seat, please click here.
