Photo collection shows mid-century life around Pratt Institute
BY SUSAN DE VRIES
There is still a bit of mystery
surrounding the thousands
of photographs, but
after a major digitization project,
an intriguing collection
of 20th century images documenting
the people and buildings
of Pratt Institute and its
environs are available to eager
researchers and Brooklyn
history enthusiasts.
Taken between 1957 and
1973 by the Pratt Institute
Photo Department, the negatives
sat in a fi ling cabinet
largely inaccessible to researchers
until efforts to scan
the almost 30,000 individual
images began in 2019. The twoyear
project by Pratt’s Special
Collections & Archives
became a full-time task for a
scanning technician during
the work-from-home days of
the pandemic. The negatives
were scanned, converted into
positive images and assembled
as contact sheets for easier
viewing. With the last of the
7,000 contact sheets uploaded
this summer, the online collection
is now complete.
A browse through the
mostly black and white images
Ryerson Street on June 12, 1959. Pratt Institute Archives
shows student and academic
life were heavily documented,
including homecoming, lectures
and athletic events. There
is also plenty of architecture.
A glimpse at the background
of a baseball game gives views
COURIER LIFE, S 18 EPTEMBER 24-30, 2021
of the surrounding neighborhood
in 1958, workers are
shown busy converting the
former Goodwill building at
369 Dekalb Avenue into the
Pratt Studios in 1963, and a series
of images from 1973 shows
the impact of housing policies
on the residences of Clinton
Hill and Bed Stuy. The images
aren’t limited to people
and buildings; architectural
models and plans, art exhibits,
maps and brochures are
included in the collection as
well.
Some digging also reveals
that the collection has images
from beyond the campus and
its immediate surroundings,
including 1958 photographs
of an art class at Coney Island,
1966 shots of the former
Squibb (now former Watchtower)
complex in Brooklyn
Heights and a 1967 proposal
for a redesign of the Brooklyn
Navy Yard.
Full details about what is
depicted in the images, which
were originally intended for
promotional use, and even the
identity of the photographers
is scarce. The negatives were
originally stored in manila
envelopes labelled only with
a job number, date and project
title. That leaves plenty of opportunities
for online sleuths
and historians to solve some
mysteries.
“My hope is that researchers
can use the negatives as
visual evidence to supplement
their own work and glean new
insights,” said Travis Werlen,
Digital Initiatives Coordinator
at Pratt Archives. “We
would love to hear from anyone
who is able to make their
own connections with these
materials and provide information
about the images.”
The Pratt Institute Archives
Negatives Collection is
available to peruse online via
Jstor along with six other collections
from the Pratt Institute
Libraries.
BY JADA CAMILLE
An ongoing art project
is now beautifying parts of
Downtown Brooklyn with murals
creators hope will force
residents and tourists to see
the city in a new way.
“Seeing Into Tomorrow,” a
project founded by the Poetry
Society of America following
the police killings of George
Floyd and Breonna Taylor,
transforms short poems by
Richard Wright into largescale
installations.
The society’s executive
director, Matt Brogan, says
last summer’s social justice
uprising is what infl uenced
the group to start sharing
Wright’s work.
“We wanted to bring attention
to a writer whose body of
work spoke so urgently to issues
of racial injustice, but
who also insisted on holding
a space for joy,” said Brogan.
“We felt that Richard Wright’s
poetry, and his cultural legacy
in Brooklyn, was under-recognized
and that these wonderful
short poems would make for
an ideal public art project.”
Wright, a Black writer,
is best known for his works
“Black Boy” and “Native Son,”
in which he writes about the
Black man’s experience with
oppression, poverty and racism.
He began writing haiku,
and sources say that Wright
dedicated the last few years
of his life to studying the form
of poetry, writing more than
4,000 of them.
According to Brogan, the
choice to place the art on wellknown
neighborhood buildings
was a deliberate one,
aimed at creating “intimate
and unexpected encounters
between readers and poems,
encounters that are rarely witnessed
or documented.”
The Poetry Society intentionally
designed “Seeing into
Tomorrow” as a multi-site
project.
“We wanted to encourage
viewers to cross boundaries
and experience the incredible
diversity of this area,” said
Brogan.
Members of the Poetry Society
say they’ve already received
positive feedback as the
community discovers their
project and that they hope to
continue “provoking new
ways of thinking about social
justice.”
A map of the murals locations
can be found at https://
bit.ly/3hY1mtM.
Windows into the past
‘Seeing Into Tomorrow’ brings more of
Richard Wright’s words to Brooklyn
BROOKLYN
Streets of poetry
Seeing Into Tomorrow in Downtown Brooklyn.
Poetry Society of America