Meatpacking

I arrived in the West Village in the mid seventies, a modern dancer, on scholarship with Merce Cunningham. I performed at the dance space in Westbeth. I climbed out the second floor window to access the elevated railroad track, abandoned to weeds and wild flowers, now the High Line. Every day I walked the cobblestone streets of the Meatpacking District to rehearse in a loft space on Gansevoort Street. In the summers, we opened the windows to the smell of blood and raw meat that mixed with our own smell of sweat. I shopped there, by the loading docks with racks and racks of hanging beef and pig carcasses, calling out for the butchers, in their blood splattered white coats. I jogged through the district, passed the gay sex clubs and out onto the wooden piers, till all the characters became familiar — the squeegee guys, the transvestite prostitutes, the drug dealers and the addicts.

I retired as a dancer. I don’t perform any more, but I still live on the West Village stage.

I began taking my camera with me on daily walks through the West Village. Initially holding the camera and shooting felt awkward. It was very different from being a dancer. However, when shooting the Meatpacking District, I could feel the camera as an extension of my body rather than a barrier. The elements of movement: time, shape, space, and effort — are all inherent in how I see the world. I realized that these familiar elements also applied to photography. My body was my expressive art; now my choreography has morphed into my camera and is saved in my photographs.

This project, shooting the Meatpacking District, came from a need to document it. I returned there many times over months. At first, the workers were wary, but with repetition, they let me in. One of the butchers dared me to come at three am to really see the place. I did, and it became a special time to shoot: the florescent light in the dark, the dawn, then the morning light.

The Meatpacking District is now very chic with quaint clean cobblestone streets, night clubs, high end boutiques, and home to the Whitney Museum. The buildings there are now New York City Landmarked. What in the 1970s’ spanned nine blocks, is now contained in one. The slaughter houses are long gone; the meat racks, the butchers, and the truckers, in time, will also disappear.