Photo documentation of Times Square transforms Sibley's Hartell Gallery

Photo by Lynn Saville

New York City-based architectural and landscape photographer Lynn Saville and freelance writer and photographer Robin Noble have been chronicling the transformation of New York City's Times Square from the days of sex shops and dark drug dealing streets to the cacophony of light and sound accessible to the whole family that it is today. "Times Square: Reinventing the Fantasy," running through March 27 in the John Hartell Gallery in Sibley Hall, is a photographic documentation of the architectural and sociological transformation of this urban crossroads.

"It is our hope," said Noble, "that 'Times Square: Reinventing the Fantasy' will provide a journey for the viewer, reflecting the depth of an area that is multifaceted, elicits strong emotions and remains in the individual's memory and the collective unconscious."

The exhibition has over 100 photographs in several different presentation formats: walls with multiple series of subjects that set the viewer in one location in Times Square and walk them through from 1995 to 2004; another selection containing large-scale 2-by-3-foot black-and-white photographs that are printed on Mylar, a material used primarily in architectural drawing; and one that is devoted just to color.

Saville and Noble's awards include a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for "Times Square: Reinventing the Fantasy."

The Hartell Gallery is open Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.