The one-hundredth anniversary of the consolidation of the five boroughs of New York City is another reminder that Manhattan is an island. The specifically defined and contained aspects of an island--whether rural, suburban or urban--often dictate design that is characterized by superficial applications drawn from regional custom or style.

It is local, folk or vernacular architecture in practical, spiritual harmony with its site and society. Building facades become the canvas upon which the indigenous self-portrait illustrates a sense of place and identity.

Within the city island fabric, relationships between horizontal, vertical and diagonal are ever-present. Individual notions of design are projected from a never-ending series of fenestrated walls. These genre paintings--lined up side by side, one after the other--incorporate the sign, billboard, poster, banner, ornamental object, textured surface and calligraphic mark within mutable color fields.

In the venue of the gallery, this collection of images reveals the familiar and ordinary as yet another facade, reordered and recontextualized. The photographs intend to illuminate the popular visual language of a diverse yet cohesive community eager to communicate with the passerby: individuality, universality, nationalism, consumerism, privacy and publicity are alternately expressed and often reach the level of visual poetry intended to be at once familiar, yet startling.