The building’s two levels – one is half below street-level, and one is half above – give visitors views into key work areas, providing a behind-the-scenes peek into Aperture’s activities. The magazine team, the production team, and the book team are visibly present. “You can see in, and we’re happy about that. I think it’s going to give us a new understanding of our audience,” Meister says. Staff are encouraged to sit at a table in the bookstore, and listen and talk to people walking by.
The building also features a dedicated gallery space and the inaugural exhibition, which was curated by Meister, spotlights photographers who have been integral to depicting New York City, including Diane Arbus, Tina Barney, Dawoud Bey, Awol Erizku, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Deana Lawson, and Carrie Mae Weems. There’s a print loaned from the Robert Frank Foundation; some artists made new 8x10s.
Temporary exhibitions will generally be on view in the space for six to eight week stretches, though Meister says “we don’t want to become too rigid”. That ethos will run through the shows too, with most works leant on a picture rail on a shelf, rather than hung, leaving the original exposed brick undisturbed. “That lack of preciousness is very intentional,” Meister explains. “A little bit of informality feels like a nice thing. Our wall text is going to be printed on an 11×17 sheet with magnets on a beautiful little metal panel: very simple.”
In the longer term, Aperture is working with artists to develop different configurations for the space, allowing each individual to use it in their own way. “It’s not a white box, and it never will be,” Meister affirms, adding that Alex Webb, Dionne Lee, and Angélica Dass will be showing there in future.
Aperture will run public events in the gallery, with a series of conversations “between pairs of people who either know one another or one another’s work well”. Stephen Shore and Lucy Gallun, curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, will speak together on 03 October, for example, then Gillian Laub and Jil Weinstock, director of Baxter St, on 14 October; Coreen Simpson and Rujeko Hockley, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, will be in conversation on 21 October. Aperture will also continue to organise large-scale touring exhibitions.
Aperture also offers an educational program, with online curricula offered free of charge to public school teachers and kids. As Meister says: “Somebody once described Aperture as tentacular, which I love – not just because it rhymes with spectacular! It captures the breadth of what we do.”
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