About the project

In April 2020, when New York was in lockdown and the epicentre of the pandemic, Renate Aller created the project side walk. She hosted friends and neighbors on her sidewalk or visited them in their street, her camera in self timer mode, recording these masked encounters at a safe 6 feet distance. With voices muted by masks we learn to communicate with our eyes and body language, finding our bearings in a new emotional landscape. These sidewalk visits created a deep sense of community where community had been forced apart.

We are all looking at art and life now, more than ever before – through the lens of our times — art in the time of Covid-19 and our current socio political awareness heightened by the recent events surrounding the murder of George Floyd and many others.

I created the project ” side walk” with my camera during the lockdown period when NYC was the epicentre of the pandemic.
This time in history reminds me of the period right after 9/11. I took images of interiors as the drama was one of the exterior, the monumentality of this city was attacked and therefore I pointed the lens into the private spaces.
We were all afraid for our own safety then. Today we are feeling pain and are more afraid for others.

As a reaction to people’s lives in solitude ….. For most of April and May I hosted friends and neighbors on our sidewalk or visited them in their street – from a safe 6’ distance, with face masks, the camera in self timer mode recording these encounters.

These sidewalk visits give us a deep sense of community where community has been forced apart.

Photography by Renate Aller

Born in Germany, Renate Aller lives and works in New York. Her work is in the collections of corporate institutions, private collectors, and museums, including Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Yale University Art Gallery, CT, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, New Britain Museum of American Art, CT, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI, Musée des beaux-arts Le Locle, Switzerland, Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY, and the New-York Historical Society Museum, NY, where the project side walk 6’ apart, NYC will be exhibited March 10th – July 10th 2022

Texts by Marilyn S. Kushner, Lara Pan

Marilyn S. Kushner is the Curator and Head, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections at the New-York Historical Society since 2006. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University and has previously worked at the Whitney Museum as a Research Assistant, the Montclair Art Museum where she was Curator of Collections, and the Brooklyn Museum where she was Chair of the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs

Lara Pan is a New York based curator and writer. She was the Program and Development Director at White Box, NYC, from 2016–2020.Pan co-curated 2019 a solo exhibition of Carolee Schneemann’s “From Then and Beyond” at Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland and 2020 with Tony Oursler, Match Gallery and MGML Museum, Slovenia. Past museum exhibitions include “The Wizard’s Chamber” Kunsthalle Winterthur (2013, Switzerland), Torre at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Biennale (2009, Venice) and “When The Fairy Tale Never Ends”, Ford Art Project (2011, New York, NY)