NICK YABLON
Associate Professor of History, University of Iowa

Walter Benjamin’s description of Parisian photographer Eugène Atget as someone who “looked for what was unremarked, forgotten, cast adrift” would also fit the little-known amateur photographer and historian, Charles Gilbert Hine.  In 1905, Hine set out to document the entire length of Broadway from Bowling Green to the top of Manhattan, focusing on structures and ways of life that were threatened by the wave of development that the advent of the subway unleashed.  Since discovering Hine’s 292 platinum prints, which were pasted into albums alongside newspaper clippings and typed histories, Nick Yablon has been working to bring “From the Sky Scraper to the Wildflower” to publication.  He will present an overview of the project, followed by readings of some of the photographs, to reveal its implications for photographic, urban, and cultural history.