Dek Unu Magazine - Eric T. Kunsman

Photo-artist Eric T. Kunsman, working in the tradition of Adams, Caponigro, Sexton, and others, makes dramatic, long-scale photographs of payphones, clearly demonstrating that snippets of urban landscape can be moving and meaningful fine art as much as rocks and sand in Weston land. Kunsman's "street" photos of Rochester, New York, are not candids shot from the hip; they are planned and produced with the same focus and form, care and craft as Weston's Big Sur and Adams' Yosemite.

Although these photos are gorgeously-realized, technically-perfect visual art, they form an equally-careful sociological study of a city, privilege and prejudice, and life in its “bad” neighborhoods. Warned that his new neighborhood was dangerous and crime-infested because it had “payphones everywhere”, Eric researched to find facts and, in the process, documented a bleak urban landscape and a very surprising gesture by Frontier Communications to spare profits to serve people in need.