Shelley Seccombe — Photography

In 1970 I moved with my husband and daughter to the West Village. We were among the first tenants in Westbeth. My husband is a sculptor, I was teaching music and playing chamber music on the violin. Photography was an interest, but didn’t appear on my resume. That changed with my images documenting the decline of the waterfront, the fires and the people who “moved in” occupying the abandoned Hudson River pier sheds as spaces for recreation, art and “cruising”.

As a result of sharing these photographs with Friends of Hudson River Park, a show at the South Street Seaport Museum was mounted in 2006, and a book of selected images was published by Fordham U. Press in 2008. I continued teaching, but in the art department at the Nightingale Bamford School, and at ICP where my students were teenagers and adults. Although I still photograph on the West Side waterfront, my travels across the continent provide new subjects around the landscapes and people.