Nadja Groux “127th@StNick”

OBSERVATIONS OF HARLEM

127th@StNick is a project done by Nadja Groux, who works at the intersection of anthropology and photography. Her work consists of a series of photos taken over several years, out of a window of her apartment in Harlem. She is observing the intersection of 127th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace and the various activities of the people passing bye. The images are presented in the manner of a story board or contact sheet, followed by singled out reproductions that are shown in large size. They almost appear like screen shots of a surveillance camera, with which she zooms in and out variantly. In doing so, she turns non-events or random moments into potentially meaningful documents, fraught with voyeurism and subtle suspicion. 

Nadja Groux is addressing complex and multilayered issues of power relations, systems of observation and control, as well as socio-political problems. Those are even more pressing as Harlem is known to be an African- American neighbourhood, which is symptomatic for the increasing gap between white and black Americans. But not only does the state monitor its (unprivileged) citizens with the help of helicopters and surveillance cameras. Also Groux and we as the viewers of her images are somehow acting out of the perspective of an empowered observer. 

The series further touches upon interrelated aspects such as urban space/ planning and its effects on peoples lives, aesthetics of everyday life situations, underground economy and – as she points out – the Stockholm Syndrome. This psychological term, used to describe a paradoxical phenomenon, wherein victims identify with their aggressors in order to cope with situations of dependence and suppression, can be understood as the common denominator of this project in many ways. 

However, Nadja Groux successfully manages to approach all these issues without giving in to sentimentality. Her explorations are presented with an analytical eye, avoiding a poetic aestheticism that often comes with the photographic image.