Documenting a Life Through Objects: A Historic New York Apartment
Photographs from the Greenwich Village home of Barbara Schwerin, who lived there from 1977 until her final days.
Her home is a classic downtown Greenwich Village apartment in a style that only exists in photographs now—something that would work well in a Warhol film or in a photo of David Bowie and Joey Ramone smoking cigarettes on a couch. It is a cavernous loft with built-in bookshelves and a built-out bathroom. It is a window into the time where one was more afraid of street crime than rent increases.
View through the loft showing the scale and layout of the historic apartment.
It is a home that is filled with relics and artifacts of a life lived with intention.
When you step through the elevator doors into the home, it asks you to walk through slowly and learn about your host. Your eyes want to linger over the small tables scattered throughout with their mementos and sentimental items.
Large-scale Bally fashion poster displayed in the living room.
There’s a framed print of an anti-Vietnam War poster resting on the ground against a wall under a hanging painted portrait of her daughter. The same print recently sold for $1,170 at auction. The print includes that it is from 100 Flowers Gallery, 122 Christopher St., NY, NY. The Internet knows nothing of that place, long since gone.
Original artwork and posters collected during Barbara Schwerin's lifetime.
Everywhere you turn, there are hand-painted folk-art butler trays hidden in corners or next to tables or chairs.
A vintage upright piano surrounded by personal photographs and collected artwork.
The bookshelves are a portrait of her. You’ll see a Velvet underground album propped up, the DSM-3, a LOT of books about sex and sexuality from a time when those kinds of books were hard to find. I hope you pause when you see my photos of the volumes and tilt your head sideways to see what she kept there.
Books, letters, and personal effects preserved throughout the home.
Barbara Schwerin was a sex therapist, practicing up until her last days. You can see where she would meet with clients in the front entry of her home.
Greenwich Village loft living room with original furnishings and collected objects.
She collected antique and vintage compacts and displayed them everywhere. The shelves are like micro-museums and the compacts are fascinating to examine. In her old age she began to sell some of them. I kept the open spaces where the missing compacts used to be instead of rearranging them to make a single, full display.
A wall display of vintage compact cases collected over several decades.
As a photographer, I often work in carefully styled spaces where every object has been arranged for the camera. I didn’t want to do that here. Missing spaces in a beloved collection tell as much of a story as full spaces can tell.
We all have our shiny things and little bits and baubles that make us happy, that we like to keep around us, our little octopus gardens. I wanted to capture hers as it was, not as it might be if it were more elevated. Her home is not just a physical record of her as a person, but also a collection, and a disappearing piece of New York history.
Historic Greenwich Village apartment documented before transition to new ownership.
I’m glad I got to meet her a few months before she passed away. I’m glad I wasn’t a stranger walking through her home. It is a special place. It is a place of another time. I’m grateful I was able to experience it.
On a business note, I would enjoy more projects like this. If you are in need of Estate Documentation Photography in New York City, please reach out. I would be pleased to photograph a loved one's home, collections, archive, an artist estate, or historic interiors. I will approach the project with care and honor the legacy of the person who curated the collection.