American Assemblies
Photography by Billy Cress & Mark Havens
December 1, 2017 - January 14, 2018
American Assemblies comprises two sets of photographic works by Billy Cress and Mark Havens that focus on Jersey Coast architecture. The title for the show comes from the purpose of the two projects, importantly, collecting and preserving beautiful and dying structures through still photographs. These places, quintessentially American in their design, are captured in a very straightforward, honest way and are presented in an undiluted fashion.
Cress' series of photographs is an extension of a collecting project he works on in Philadelphia. Havens' photos document the same beautiful but slowly dying architecture along the Jersey Coast, and add another dimension to the notions of time and place, notably, removing themselves from such contexts.