Gowanus Impression 10:57:46 AM, 2009, 2011.008.04; Gowanus Impressions photographs by Jackie Weisberg, 2011.008; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Anyone who rides the F or G trains knows this spot — it has been disrupting your life for a while now, especially if it means your home stop is skipped. This is the overpass at Smith Street and 9th Street in southern Brooklyn, formally known as the Culver Viaduct, which spans the Gowanus Canal. As one passes by the station or walks below, one can see into the murky ick we’ve come to fear as one of our nation’s recent and controversial Superfund Sites. The canal has a rich past – it was one of Brooklyn’s major commercial waterways during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the consequences of that sometimes bubble up in an unfortunately smelly way. The viaduct has been losing chunks of its infrastructure for some time and is finally getting a makeover.

Perhaps this beautiful photograph taken by Jackie Weisberg at 10:57:46 AM in 2009 will be intriguing enough to make you forget about all that for a moment. Jackie has lived in Brooklyn for many years and only recently felt able to capture the mysterious quality of the Gowanus Canal. Acknowledging its toxic status and its potential, she felt that 2009 was the moment at which she could successfully grasp the canal’s mood, beauty, and ephemeral quality before it all changes. This is one of seventeen photographs she made in her series “Gowanus Impressions,” which explores the canal in a nonjudgmental manner. Jackie donated “Gowanus Impressions” to Brooklyn Historical Society in late 2011. We haven’t even catalogued the images yet so I hope you find this to be a nice preview. You can also go to Jackie’s website to see her entire body of work while we manipulate pixels and metadata on our end. One more year to go before the transit lives of Southern Brooklynites is back to normal – hang in there!

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. To search our entire collection of images visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Fri, 1:00-5:00 p.m.