Dérive: photographs by Jessica Lange

Abstract

"In March of 2020 when New York City went into lockdown due to Covid, like many others who could, I left the city. I didn't return until October, seven months later. Everything had changed. It was a different city. It felt abandoned. Blocks of storefronts were boarded up. All 'non-essential' businesses had closed by executive order. The usual crowds of people moving down the streets had disappeared. I read somewhere that a city's meaning is to make loneliness bearable. There was no masquerading the loneliness now. I mentioned to my son that I had no idea what I was going to do during the long winter months ahead. He asked me if I was familiar with the French philosopher Guy Debord and his theory of the Dérive. He suggested that I make it my practice over the following months. And that was how it started. Almost every day I would leave my apartment and start walking, letting myself 'be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters found there.' I started carrying my camera with me so I would have a visual diary of my wanderings. I walked places in the city I'd never seen before. And I was moving slowly for a change. I was taking the time to really look, often stopping to speak with people living out there on the street. For the following six months I practiced Dérive. These photographs are a record of that time."-- Afterword by Jessica Lange.