Benjamin Swett | 30/30 

September 12 ‒ October 13, 2019

Planthouse is pleased to announce 30/30, an exhibition featuring photographs of the New York skyline by Benjamin Swett. 

Taken during the course of a year from the 30th-floor penthouse at 30 East 85th Street, the photographs capture views in all directions and in all kinds of light. They comprise a portrait of New York City from high up, presenting the city as a complex landscape of shapes, colors, and depths. 

The location of the building from which Swett took the photographs—on the east side of Central Park, and roughly at the centerline of the park—allowed unobstructed views of midtown Manhattan, Central Park, The Central Park Reservoir, The Upper West Side, The East Side of Manhattan, Queens, The George Washington Bridge, the Palisades, and the far hills of New Jersey. Because the photographs were taken at dawn or at the very end of the day, and in moonlight, they depict the city as a place of subtly variegated surfaces and hues, with the glow of sunset merging with the twinkle of lighted windows, and clouds hovering and forming according to their own patterns.

About the Artist: 

Benjamin Swett (b. 1959) is a writer and photographer whose books combining photographs and text include Route 22 and New York City of Trees, which won the New York City Book Award for Photography. He is the author and photographer of guidebooks to the Hudson Valley and to New York City's Great Trees, and collaborated with the singer/songwriter Heather Woods Broderick to produce the collaborative book/CD of tree photographs and songs Home Winds. A writer and photographer of the New York City Parks Department for thirteen years, Swett founded the Parks in Print program, which produced books, brochures, maps, and guides New York City's lesser-known parks. His photographs are in private, corporate, and public collections including the Museum of the City of New York.