There was a moment, in the not-too-distant past, when you couldn\u2019t walk through New York\u2019s Lower East Side without encountering makeshift murals composed of Xeroxed flyers. Artists who patronized local institutions like Todd\u2019s Copy Shop used Xerox technology to advertise shows, compile grant applications, and seek studio assistance. Now, we\u2019ve mostly moved our notices online. But a trace of the previous practice can currently be glimpsed downtown, through the third-floor windows of the International Center of Photography on Essex Street.<\/p>\n
The Xeroxed mural viewable from the sidewalk is actually a collage of digital photographs by Daniel Arnold that have been run through a photocopier and reproduced on letter-size paper. As was often standard in the 1980s, the \u201ccopy guy\u201d here is not Arnold, but a third party: curator Aaron Stern. An artist himself, Stern has reinterpreted the works of fifteen contemporary photographers as photocopies for the group exhibition \u201cHARD COPY NEW YORK.\u201d The second element of the title grounds the exhibition both geographically and artistically, evoking Carter-era curatorial projects\u2014Brian Eno\u2019s 1978 compilation\u00a0No New York, Diego Cortez\u2019s 1981 \u201cNew York\/New Wave\u201d exhibition\u2014that sought to express the unique energy of the downtown scene. Only now, the New York we see is a ghost.<\/p>\n
\u201cHARD COPY NEW YORK\u201d reflects a past image of the city back to itself in the present. Arnold\u2019s content hews to this form\u2014his collage is entirely composed of archival photographs documenting a decade of urban bustle. The rest of the show mirrors this marriage of process and product. Before my viewing, I anticipated that I might encounter a selection of works interrogating the formal differences between photographic and xerographic technologies. Instead, I was met by an exhibition that, in almost every moment, felt acutely attuned to Xerox\u2019s cultural history: its typical content, modes of proliferation, and place in debates about authenticity, activism, and intellectual property.<\/p>\n
Committed to the materiality of Xerox, Stern has hung the works with neither glazing nor framing\u2014small nails fasten each to the wall, DIY style. The series that opens the exhibition reveals both the rigor and playfulness of the curatorial approach. In\u00a0Pages from the script of Akerman Ballet (2019), Collier Schorr presents a selection of images documenting her choreographic interpretation of Chantal Akerman\u2019s Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974). These works tether xerography\u2019s commercial use as a tool of replication to its personal use as a tool for recording intimacy. Amorous embraces and bare-breasted dancers abound, hinting at adolescent urges to moon, kiss, and flash the Xerox machine\u2019s illuminated glass. Given the copy room\u2019s association with office romance and illicit pas de deux, I\u2019ve always found xerography to be a curiously sexy technology. And \u201cHARD COPY NEW YORK\u201d is certainly filled with plenty of sex. Thomas Ruff serves it to us quite explicitly, through blurry blown-up JPEGs drawn from early internet pornography in his series \u201cNudes\u201d (1999\u20132012).<\/p>\n
Contra the kisses in Schorr and Ruff, Zo\u00eb Ghertner gives us bodies\u2014particularly women\u2019s\u2014which, while physically isolated, also forge connections through feminist art history. Leaning into xerography\u2019s association with citation, Ghertner\u2019s bodies are ensconced in earth \u00e0 la Ana Mendieta (warm sand (or is it dirt?), 2022) or obstructed by objects \u00e0 la Barbara T. Smith (Untitled (shell and belly), 2021). Other works celebrate xerography as a form of copyright infringement. Jerry Hsu\u2019s Untitled (2011) foregrounds a wall graffitied with the words \u201cGETTY IMAGES,\u201d hidden behind a gate. For many, Getty\u2019s stock images are too expensive to license\u2014but its moniker, it would seem, is fair use. Democratic impulses zip through the exhibition. In the diptych 2.0 (2025), Ari Marcopoulos captures two buildings graffitied with the words \u201cDESTROY\/ABOLISH ICE.\u201d Defying institutions that seek to restrict and reinforce, Hsu and Marcopoulos echo those activists who have prized both graffiti and xerography for their ability to proliferate beyond the bounds of typical written media.<\/p>\n
The show ends on the ICP\u2019s second floor with a series drawn from John Divola\u2019s \u201cDogs Chasing My Car in the Desert\u201d (1996\u20132001). Though one dog bares its teeth and casts an aggressive gaze at the camera, it is another machine\u2014Divola\u2019s car\u2014that seems to have incited the canine\u2019s response. Photocopiers are known to arouse similarly strong reactions. They jam and break down, prompting us to lose our professional cool, to curse and kick. Like an intractable lover, they are, to quote one machine technician, \u201cnotorious for not giving you what you want.\u201d While researching a project exploring the artistic and quotidian uses of photocopy technology, I have found that two groups of people were particularly passionate to talk: teachers and photographers. The teachers, who still rely on photocopies to distribute information to students, told me that they are engaged in \u201cdaily wars\u201d with their schools\u2019 machines.<\/p>\n
But the photographers were less combative, more reparative. One told me, simply, that she really loved the feel of copy paper. Her statement evinces what I take to be the central thesis of Stern\u2019s show. In our digital age, it can be tempting to reduce photographs to mere images. But they are also objects, razor-thin as their third dimension might be. Whether made with the Xerox machine\u2019s dry pigment or the dark room\u2019s gelatin silver, they can be touched, rolled up, torn. As in Arnold\u2019s photographs of packed subway cars, languid park hangs, and buzzy art openings, they can also be collaged into a flurry of populist energy\u2014resplendently social, yet raw and unrefined, like the xerographic antidote to a solitary selfie perfected with Facetune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a moment, in the not-too-distant past, when you couldn\u2019t walk through New York\u2019s Lower East Side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-165005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}