Cloud Drift

Cloud Drift
2017 | a series of four cyanotype-image flags flown over the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY | cyanotype on cotton | 3 x 5 ft each

Cloud Drift was a series of cyanotype-image flags flown over the Gowanus Canal for three summer months in 2017 at each of its pedestrian crossings–on the bridges on Union, Carroll, Third and Ninth Streets in Brooklyn. The Gowanus Canal is a unique vestige of industrial Brooklyn turned dumping ground and eventually Superfund Site which began its life as a creek. Each flag featured a photograph of the canal’s surface just below, with its floating debris, mucky formations and reflections of surrounding skies, signs and structures. The flags were printed as 3 x 5 foot cyanotypes and attached to existing light posts. As each flag blew in the wind, their abstracted images of the canal’s murky surface unfurled, transforming its toxic waters into sublimely cloudy skies while recalling a distant pre-industrial past and suggesting future possibilities.

Cyanotype is an early photographic process from the 1840s, around the time the canal was built. This process was integral to the project. Exposing chemically-treated fabric to the open sky and developing images in a watery bath linked to the canal’s polluted present and industrial past. The resulting blue images conjure the colors of idealized skies and waterways. Cyanotype images are still sensitive to ultra-violet light; by design, the flags’ images faded over months in the summer sun.

Union Street Bridge | Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn