Rosler describes the place as a 'skidrow' - a 'place of down and outs'
Text does work of descriptive
- 'An act of refusal'. She is refusing to ignore them by not photographing the people
- doesn't want to objectify the poor or 'other' like Jacob Riis, children sleeping Mulberry street New York city, How the other lives, NY, 1890
- refusal of aestheticising poverty
-Rosler didn't want to depict ethnographic photography "others" exoticism
or war photography like Don McCullin, 1971, where work becomes spectacle
Michael Zettler - The Bowery (book) 1975 - opposite of what Rosler created
Rosler working against Diane Arbus 'freak photographs' 1970.
Rosler wrote an essay against Richard Billingham's photographs
Rosler's work starts off with words. Pictures of environments. Words take place of people in the imagery. The Bowery today has been completely gentrified.
National Bank image- building contrasted against two bottles - the bottles in place of the people who sit and drink there. Capitalisation contrasted against those who fall outside capitalist ideals. The people are invisible.
Rosler's work talks about people without objectifying them.
