PHIL BUEHLER, “NO MAN IS AN ISLAND: Poetry in the Ruins of the New York Archipelago”

Front Room Gallery is proud to present “No Man Is an Island: Poetry in the Ruins of the New York Archipelago,” fifty years of work by photographer Phillip Buehler documenting many of the islands surrounding Manhattan. This is Buehler’s third solo show at Front Room Gallery.

Phillip Buehler is a New York based photographer who documents the deterioration and remnants of neglected architecture constructed in the recent past. In the series “No Man is an Island…” Buehler has photographed the historic, and also often forgotten islands, around New York City. Some of them, like Ellis Island, loom large in their impact on history, culture and existence in the national identity. Others, like “Rat Island,” a privately-owned 2.5 acre islet north of The Bronx, with an unusual statue of William Tell (and nothing much more), are known about by virtually no one. But many, like North Brother Island, held storied institutions like Riverside Hospital— a place to quarantine people with smallpox, and later tuberculosis, and even later drug addiction. Eventually the forces that be let it go to seed, and it has been abandoned for around sixty years now. 

May 25th -June 23rd, 2024