IN RICHMOND COUNTY
Adam Pape
This summer I spent more time in Staten Island than many lifelong New Yorkers ever have the chance to. The borough offered up a conflicted and complex history not unlike many others in the United States. Its landscape complicates the image of New York City so entrenched in the popular imagination, as SI's citizens are regularly represented only by the ferry that carries you to or from the island itself.
Determined to create a more varied and unique image of the life I found ashore while crisscrossing the borough from the Coast Guard installation at Fort Wadsworth to a horse ranch in Prince's Bay, I photographed paintings and peacocks, barbers and sailors, politicians and beauty queens – all of them part of one of New York's too-easily overlooked strange and beautiful places.
Adam Pape (@adam.pape) is a photographer based in New York City and he continues to draw from the city for his subjects, from its nocturnal labor to its native wildlife. He earned his MFA from Yale in 2016 and his work has appeared in several publications including The New Yorker Magazine and The Fader. His photographs have also been in exhibitions at Danziger Gallery, Johalla Projects, and Syracuse Univesity's Random Access Gallery.