Staten Island's western shore: rusting hulls of tugs and ferries settled in the marsh grass, a kayak route through them, herons on the wrecks, the works on the wheelhouses.
The Arthur Kill is the tidal strait between Staten Island and New Jersey. Since the 1930s the marsh off Arthur Kill Road and Rossville Avenue has been a dumping ground for ships: John J. Witte ran the salvage yard and refused the curious public any access, and as many as 400 vessels once lay there. When Witte died in 1980 the yard passed to his son and became the Donjon Marine Company. Between 25 and 40 hulls remain, among them the fireboat Abram S. Hewitt, which helped rescue victims of the General Slocum disaster in 1904.
Source · Baruch College, NYCdata Hidden Gems ↗
Dozens of scuttled tugboats, barges and a ferry sunk to their decks in the tidal marsh, rust and peeling paint, cordgrass and mud at low tide, the New Jersey refineries and cranes across the water, fog. Mood: fog on the kill. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.