Description

Carole Teller is an artist who has lived in the East Village since the early 1960’s. As a photographer, she had a keen and often prescient eye, capturing in her daily travels people and places that struck her, but which were also often on the precipice of change or disappearing. In some cases these were buildings in the process of being demolished, like Penn Station or tenements being cleared for urban renewal. In other cases they were fading painted signs growing fainter by the day. But often these were people, businesses, street scenes, or layers of grit or decay which were integral parts of her New York, but which were frequently on the edge of transformation, revival, or removal. We are incredibly fortunate that Carole preserved these photos, and has allowed the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation to share them, and to sell prints to raise funds in support of our work. From the early 1960s to the early 1990s – a period during which New York underwent incredible change, and has since undergone further dramatic change – Carole captures the poignancy and beauty of a city in flux. While she focused largely on her downtown surroundings, she captured Brooklyn, Midtown, and other locations as they experienced the sometimes jarring ebb and flow of time. A note about the pictures: most were received undated; dates (if any appear) are generally approximations, though if a specific date appears it is based upon historic research. Similarly, exact locations have been discerned for most but not all of the images; we welcome any corrections or insights into unidentified locations. Please email us here. We hope you enjoy these striking images as much as we did. Carole Teller is currently a painter and is affiliated with Gallery 71, www.Gallery71.com, and The Salmagundi Club, www.Salmagundi.org, where she exhibits her paintings of New York City scenes.