518 101st Street, Love Canal Neighborhood, Niagara Falls, New York, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

About this artwork

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Joel Sternfeld

Title

518 101st Street, Love Canal Neighborhood, Niagara Falls, New York, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1994

Medium

Chromogenic print

Edition

5 of 7

Inscriptions

Unmarked retco; inscribed verso, on mount, along bottom edge, in black ink: JS. [illegible numbers crossed out] 191 [written above].4 5/7 518 101st Street, Love Canal Neighborhood, Niagara Falls, New York, May 1994 N-May 1994 / P-September 1996 Joel Sternfeld From the 1920s through the 1950s, the city of Niagara Falls, the United States Army, and the Hooker Chemical Corporation dumped over two hundred different toxic chemicals into Love Canal. Many of them contained dioxin, one of the most lethal chemicals known. In 1953, Hooker Chemical covered the then-dry Love Canal with a thin layer of dirt, and sold it to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for one dollar. The terms of the sale stipulated that if anyone incurred physical harm or death because of the buried waste, Hooker could not be held liable. A school was constructed on the site of the waste dump and private homes were built nearby. In the late 1970s, an unusually high number of birth defects, miscarriages, cancers, and other illnesses were reported in the Love Canal neighborhood by the Niagara Falls Gazette. Lois Gibbs, whose two children developed rare blood disorders, led a successful grassroots campaign to have the state of New York purchase the homes of five hundred families, enabling them to relocate. From the series, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam

Dimensions

Image/paper: 47.2 × 59.4 cm (18 5/8 × 23 7/16 in.); Mount: 63.4 × 76.4 cm (25 × 30 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Jeanne and Richard S. Press

Reference Number

1997.777.1

Extended information about this artwork

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