Elena Lyakir

In recent years my Brooklyn neighborhood has dramatically transformed due to gentrification and real estate development. I have been living in Greenpoint for over a decade and gradual disappearance of punctuated natural environments has been uncanny.
I began taking photographs of still remaining vegetated sites as a form of record. After a few days or weeks I would return to several locations I had photographed to observe the transformations. As I witnessed the ominous green construction fences changing the history of city landscape by enveloping places where, not long ago, thriving flora served as habitat for birds and other city “wildlife”, I was compelled to explore this subject in my work.
In this ongoing project I compose in-camera double exposures of intimate pockets of nature photographed in and around inner cities to create immersive large-scale panoramic images. The subtly abstract visual quality of the double exposure technique echoes nature in constant flux – a result of the human influence on the environment.
The project had expanded to include other cities in the U.S. and around the globe. City Parks Romance illuminates random sights of vegetation as well as remaining city parks as an expansive and dreamy atmosphere of romance and nostalgia – sentiments we often feel for nature as a result of living in urban environments.