THE GREAT ESCAPE
Photographer Irina Rozovsky discovers the diverse pleasures of Prospect Park.
Story by CRAIG HUBERT Photography by IRINA ROZOVSKY
Since the start of the pandemic, landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted’s description of Prospect Park as
an escape from the “cramped, confined, and controlling
circumstances of the streets” has never felt more vital. For
many people over the past year who were pushed into the
park because of their desire for open space amidst a lockdown,
escape was the only option. Joining others as something
closer to inhabitants than visitors, they experienced
the multivarious charms of the park for the first time.
The photographer Irina Rozovsky captures some of the
same spirit in her new book, “In Plain Air,” published
by MACK. Shot between 2011 and 2020, the photos
were all taken in Prospect Park, tracing the activity of
its many visitors across different seasons. They have the
glow of a lazy afternoon, of people going through their
daily routines: a woman playing a violin alone; two men
practicing tai chi; kids building a snowman. Some appear
posed, others candid. People embrace on blankets at Long
Meadow. Occasionally, a swan from Prospect Park Lake
makes an appearance. What you notice immediately is
the diversity at hand. Residents from all corners of the
borough put every square inch of the park to use. “It is
a melting pot bubbling over in all its glory,” Rozovsky
writes in the book.
But at the end of the day, everybody goes home. Rozovsky,
whose work has been featured in The New Yorker,
New York Times Magazine, and Harpers, among other
publications, and has work in the permanent collection
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is ultimately moved
by the park’s transitory nature. “I come back again and
again to realize that the people moving through the park
are here one minute, gone the next,” she writes. “They
come for an afternoon, to sit, to stroll, but when they
leave, the park remains.”
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All images from “In Plain Air,” MACK, 2021. Courtesy the artist and MACK.