The Gowanus Canal is a 1.8-mile-long waterway connecting Upper New York Bay with the formerly industrial interior of Brooklyn. Steven Hirsch grew up in the paradise of Brooklyn in the late 1940s and '50s, where he knew practically the whole borough, except for the Gowanus Canal, not witnessing it until a friend took him there in 2010. Hirsch has shot the canal surface dozens of times since that unforgettable day and the result is a series of eerily beautiful abstract photos, telling the visual story of what pollution and indifference hath wrought.
