Documenting Urban Change as a Civil Wrong: A Case of Photographic Evidence in the Construction of the New York City Subway
Wednesday, February 12, 2020: 10:30 AM
Salon C-1 (Hilton Chicago)
Beginning in the mid 1800s, municipal and state governments routinely commissioned photographs of urban infrastructure that served as publicity materials, the paperwork of urban governance, and archival records. As part of this documentary impulse, photographs of urban infrastructure also furnished legal evidence. This essay, an inquiry into urban photography, legal evidence, and the shaping of the city, turns to the use of photographs in a group of civil lawsuits from the late 1910s against New York City. Building owners garnered compensation from the municipality for the construction of an elevated subway platform in front a group of building on 86th Street at 20th Avenue in Brooklyn. The lawsuits showed that the platform impeded light and air, ultimately decreasing property values and increasing gas expenditures to keep the interiors lit. The plaintiffs’ lawyers marshaled photographs to
illustrate the platform’s effect on the adjacent buildings. During the trial, the defense called as a witness the Rapid Transit Board’s staff photographer, Pierre P. Pullis, who, beginning in 1900, had shot countless photographs of subway construction. In an attempt to discredit the images, Pullis contended that they were underexposed and therefore did not properly show natural light on the street. Pullis’s testimony failed to challenge the epistemological
and ontological status of photography as an agent of truth. This essay argues that the photographs demonstrated urban change as a civil wrong as part of legal regimes that legitimated changing public expectations about the municipality’s role in shaping modern New York City.
illustrate the platform’s effect on the adjacent buildings. During the trial, the defense called as a witness the Rapid Transit Board’s staff photographer, Pierre P. Pullis, who, beginning in 1900, had shot countless photographs of subway construction. In an attempt to discredit the images, Pullis contended that they were underexposed and therefore did not properly show natural light on the street. Pullis’s testimony failed to challenge the epistemological
and ontological status of photography as an agent of truth. This essay argues that the photographs demonstrated urban change as a civil wrong as part of legal regimes that legitimated changing public expectations about the municipality’s role in shaping modern New York City.