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New York

Artist takes over NYC’s obsolete phone booths

#AdTakeover 15 of 52: An illustration from inside of Aleppo by @mollycrabapple, in collaboration with Marwan Hisham. “In 2015, my friend and fellow journalist Marwan Hisham visited East Aleppo, which was held by rebels at the time. Over a series of weeks, he sent me pictures of life beneath the Assad regime’s daily bombardment, which I then drew from. This drawing shows the frontline neighborhood of Bustan Qusr, where residents had turned a bus into a makeshift shelter from snipers. As Syria makes its annual appearance in American headlines, this is a tribute to people who endured six years of war.” – #MollyCrabapple Photo by @lunapark #adbust #artinadplaces #nycstreetart #streetartnyc #streetart #nycart

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For an entire year, NYC’s phone booths — those holdovers from another era — will be transformed by an artist allergic to advertisements.

Caroline Caldwell’s project is called “Art in Ad Places” and actually started in January in Brooklyn when she added a print of “Shipwrecks of Unicorn Beach” by photographer Adam Wallacavage to a phone booth, according to Gothamist. Since then, she has featured artists Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Molly Crabapple and Shepard Fairey, among others.

Caldwell puts up one print a week, and then posts a photo of the work on Instagram alongside an artist statement.

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“The infrastructure is there, but it doesn’t serve any purpose,” Caldwell’s partner RJ Rushmore told Gothamist, referring to the phone booths. “The basic concept for the payphone company is, ‘We’ll provide you with payphones and maintain the infrastructure. In exchange we’ll serve you advertising.’ Well, many of them aren’t working anymore. It seems like a really bad deal!”

[Gothamist] —Christopher Cameron