Newly Discovered Photos Capture Scenes of 1970s New York City
A new collection of photographs depicting New York City's parks in the 1970s is now on display.
“1978: The NYC Parks/New York Times Photo Project” is on view at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park. The photographs, taken in the fall of 1978, capture candid scenes of everyday life in the city's public parks.
Then-Parks Commissioner Gordon J. Davis hired an eight-person team of temporarily unemployed New York Times photojournalists during the 1978 newspaper strike, tasking them with documenting the parks system across the city, "warts and all." The show features images taken at a time when the city was near bankrupt — and the parks certainly look it. However, New Yorkers were clearly undeterred, making the parks their own.
The result of this project was nearly 3,000 color photographs, depicting a spontaneous cross section of people ranging in age and ethnicity engaging with their parks. But the images were boxed up, put away in storage and forgotten for decades, until now.
WNYC’s Richard Hake made a visit to the gallery in the park to meet with Commissioner Davis, who walked through the exhibit and offered up some highlights, with a side of New York City history.
“1978: The NYC Parks/New York Times Photo Project” is free and on display at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, now through June 14th.
The Parks Department is also asking the public to reach out if they or anyone they know is featured in any images in the show. Exhibition organizers and NYC Parks Director of Arts and Antiquities Jonathan Kuhn can be reached at artandantiquities@parks.nyc.gov.
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