“If you give in to them in the same spirit of patience and curiosity in which that they were made, Cutler’s quiet photographs act as a portal to the borough’s past and present. Red Hook is revealed through its details, reshaped by the winds of change. They are not prettified in her pictures, but they are respected, given dignity. She clearly has a deeply held regard for these weathered surfaces that tell a uniquely American story”.—Simon Bainbridge, extract from the book essay
“The Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, is an outpost in a city of villages. It’s not a thorough-fare, nor a fully-fledged destination. This is a somewhat frontier-like enclave that you only go to if you have business there. Whilst it has ebbed and flowed with the moving tide of migration, economy, industry and culture; its history is at once rich, yet surprisingly understated. With, The Hook, Lisa Cutler presents a genuine wanderlust for her own city. Driven by an explorer’s fascination, she adeptly examines what is essentially a disorienting urban backlot; within physical view of the Manhattan skyline, but also worlds apart. Cutler’s photographs are formal, and sophisticated observations. These are visual documents of a built environment that, though absent of people, percolate human presence—both past and present. The photographs are elegant in their storytelling, appropriately restrained, and a smart image-rich visualization, that delve beneath the obvious surface of what we see”.—Debra Klomp Ching, Klompching Gallery
”Photographers with a certain sensibility and a sensitivity to place, when aligned with the right place, can bring a resonance to their subject matter that is powerfully evocative, ultimately transcending place and time. Lisa Cutler has found a resonant subject in Red Hook, a once-discarded urban district enclosed by a roaring expressway and an industrial canal, with huge areas of social housing and perpetually declining prosperity. It is a place difficult to comprehend visually, but she has succeeded brilliantly in finding the humanity in inhospitable streetscapes, bringing Red Hook to life for all of us”.—Gary Van Zante, former Curator MIT Museum